The provocative, Pettibone-esque cover alone caused a minor furor amongst sensitive types and even the goddamn printers that Handshake tried to use to get the sleeves made for the debut album from Brooklyn noise rock thugs Couch Slut. And that's only the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. The real filth found on My Life As A Woman comes via the mangy, ultra-heavy and utterly discordant sludge that rolls off this gang of miscreants, emitting their noxious heaviness and psycho-sexual derangement in a wave of choking petrol fumes, vicious howling aggression from frontlady Megan Osztrosits, and ugly-ass metallic crunch, wrapped in a bloodstained shroud of carnal horror. This album kicked my ass upon first listen, but I was doubly stoked to find that the group also included Amy Mills from blackened prog metallers Epistasis, whose latest came out on Crucial Blast earlier last year. She's one of the guitarists in this quintet, dishing out a big chunk of Couch Slut's discordant shrapnel. The stinking influence of classic noise rockers like Cherubs, Unsane, Brainbombs, Oxbow, Jesus Lizard and the like is all over this album, but Couch Slut cranks up the metallic qualities to bone-crushing degrees, slopping their hideous (but weirdly catchy) noise rock over blasts of pummeling double bass, bursts of deformed thrash, and big dose of classic American hardcore punk; on a song like "Replacement Addiction", the band hurtles into anthemic, fast-paced punk; elsewhere on "Rape Kit", they slip into slower, moodier passages of morose jangle amid blasts of coruscating distortion and haunting guitar melody that is really reminiscent of early Dinosaur Jr circa their first album. There's also some killer free-jazz style saxophone playing that pops up intermittently, squalls of freeform blowing that emerge in the cracks between songs, bleating notes racing over smears of muffled urban noise and black sonic stains of industrial-tinged squalor, and when that sax starts squealing violently over one of the band's monstrous lurching riffs, I can't help but be reminded of those classic filth-mongers Brainbombs; there's also some interesting electronic melodies that are used on "Carpet Farmer" that give it an unusual feel. Lots going on here that I dig and lots that distinguishes this stuff from your standard exercise in run-of-the-mill retro-pigfuck (not that I have a problem with that). A real powerhouse of a debut.

Released in a limited edition of two hundred copies in gatefold packaging - Please note that all of the copies of this record that we've received arrived here with some minor shelf wear/sleeve wear; nothing too brutal, but something to be aware of if you are a stickler for having your record sleeves in pristine shape.