The new full-length from Buffalo avant-hardcore outfit Gas Chamber is one of the weirdest Iron Lung Records releases that's come out this year; while the band's previous records all flirted with experimental noise and cranked-out power-violence tendencies, this new batch of songs heads into even mathier and more angular territory, while still retaining plenty of the vicious thrashcore and power-violence elements that made their previous records sound so rabid. The first ten songs are short, succinct blasts of skronky hardcore with hints of old-school math rock, lots of jagged, off-the-wall riffery and oddball time signature changes, the guitar weaving long dark winding melodies, with the bass takes the lead throughout most of the album. These songs are set upon with sudden bursts of bone-scraping electronic noise and rumbling junk-noise blastscapes a la K2 or Hal Hutchinson, and detours into moody, slow instrumental passages of pensive slowcore.

With all of this stuff going on, there's a proggy edge to Gas Chamber's dark, blistering hardcore punk, especially when you hear songs like "Time Lapse", its cascading, chorus-drenched guitar textures comparable to Blind Idiot God, and the bewitching melody that emerges amid the breakneck blastcore of "My Warsaw". I'm reminded of some of those jazzier, proggier bands that started to appear on SST in the later half of the 80's, though this album is a much more violent affair, and the electronic noise interludes that appear as burbling bacterial masses of entropic analogue murk also point towards the influence of Man Is The Bastard. The centerpiece of the album is the nearly eleven minute "Pigeon"; here, the band dispenses with the Infestoid speed violence for a sprawling, atmospheric piece of mournful slowcore that resembles something from Codeine playing beneath the screams of terrified animals and disturbing electronic noises, the music chilly and gloomy and beautiful, slow shuffling drums draped in reverb, the guitars drenched with an almost funerary feel, all of this gloomily gorgeous feedback-laced sadness sounding like some doom-laden 4AD band transforming into fuzz-seared elliptical hypno-rock, only erupting into one final blast of sonic violence at the very end. One to definitely check out if you're into the more adventurous likes of Gasp, Suppression, Suffering Luna, and Man Is The Bastard. This first edition of Hemorrhaging Light comes with a green flexidisc with an additional noise track, limited to five hundred copies in heavyweight jacket ans comes with digital download.