Please note that there are two different listings for this record, one that arrived here with minor but noticeable seam split damage, the other perfectly intact. The LPs with the split were received like that from the distributor, and are priced accordingly.

Another absolute motherfucker of an album from Macedonian mutation curators Fuck Yoga, one that I'd been trying to get in stock for some time. Finally landed it, and it's living up to all of the crazed descriptions that I had read about it. Oof. Transhunter are among the most deranged of modern "hardcore" bands, mashing seemingly disparate styles into an enraged abomination that leaks unchecked violence, anti-athoritarian bile, and beautifully degenerate imagery. Haven't heard anything like what these guys are doing, I can say that for certain. Heavy enough to warrant inclusion in the Encyclopedia Metallum, but far too weirrd to catch traction with the internet-music masses, this self-titled LP fucked me up. I get hard G.I.S.M. vibe off the band visually and in print, especially with Crass-style lettering and their boisterous self-description as a "Para-militant Psychic Assembly". I dig that. And check out the label's own description: "A valorous automatic bridging of distant inhuman conditions and forging them in an alchemic weapon of salvation, for some.", and specifically ci8ting their primary "influences" as Coil, Abruptum, Beherit, SPK, Hellhammer, and Dead Can Dance. OK. But even with all of that preamble, the actual music on this platter goes way beyond the warped hardcore punk I was expecting from these guys based on their other bands; aside from lead singer Viktor Ribar, there's bassist Oleg Chunihin (Goli Deca) and drummer Ivan Kocev (Macedonia's busiest man doin' time in Goli Deca, Potop, and Kje Da E Gjaolo alongside running Fuck Yoga itself). As someone who has been following this country's small but rabid underground art scene, these guys are known quantities.

None of which had me nearly strapped in enough for the instantaneous skullfuck that Transhunter beamed right into my face from opener "Salute!". Shadowy religious organ music floats in over the beginning of the record, set against the sounds of metallic buzzsaw noise and strange whispered voices, suddenly disrupted by what sounds t\like a squealing saxophone. And then "Archmartyr" bulldozes right over you with a noxious industrial sludge dirge that pounds you into the floor like a fuckin' nail; a monstrous two-chord riff repeats itself internimably over demented screams and harsh factory-floor ambience. Then "Two Masks (or More)" picks up from there with an even slower and more depraved slow-motion meltdown, bizarre ululuating screams and crazed laughter echoing overhead, glottal blackened shrieks stretching over another disgusting bass-heavy riff, glacial hardcore drenched in industrial sludge and acrid electronics, then continuing to beat you over what's left of your skull with one atavistic riff and slurred, vomit-choked incantations cycling like a machine on the verge of collapse. These guys produce each one of these gnarly offensives in short, two-minute bursts of hatefulness, sometimes shifting gear into a tgrinding mid-tempo sludgepunk groove , sending out cloudy gusts of minimal electronic thrum, hints of completekly drug-damaged darkwave melody crawling out of the cracks. It's got a similiar throwback vibe as Ride For Revenge at times, a clearly black metal-influenced filthiness and abjection tangled in screaming metallized guitar solos and primitive hardcore ferocity. "Organization" then evoke the primal industrial clang of early Savage Republic and, yes, SPK. All the time, swarming with bizarre and unidentifiable sounds and broken instrumentation, the occasu\iobnal caveman blastbeat spiking out of the glorious necfrotizing mess. Most importantly, this shit is heavy as fuck, relentless in how they slam this bass and drum assault (I have no idea if actual electric guitars are being used) into you while the drummer shifts between stomping slo-mo battery and bits of militaristic snare. And then there's "A Need to Be Tamed ", which sounds like some ancient, long-forgotten Eastern European synth-punk, briefly moaning among the charred and blackneed tarpit violence. Huge, off-key choir-like chants show up like a gang of drunken, possibly trepanated Benedictine monks as the band sinks deeper and deeper into a stinking ritualized quicksand crawl, with some even weiorder elements of death rock and improvisation slithering around the end of the album; I needed a klonopin when "Albino Incest Angel" came on.

Hideous, for sure. Crushing heavy, without a doubt. Brrilliant brain-damaged barbarism. Another band that I am already thirsting for more material from.