Spasm Smash XXXOXoX Ox & Ass
(Elemental) Used 2xLP $22.00 (Out-of-stock)
The improvisational 20-track album from 1993 opens with the chaotic and energetic “The Aroma of Gina Arnold,” “heightened by Glen Galloway‘s wavering vocals (including the line, ‘They said all youth was dead, how could they know / Your plastic culture sucks, and it’s gonna blow!’). The frantic San Diego band shines on the choppy ‘Good Blood After Bad’ and the indie metal of ‘Death to Dead Things.’ Spasm Smash subscribes to the notion that songs have a natural energy to them, and when that energy is spent the song should come to a grinding and immediate halt. The liberating frenzy of unabashedly crazy songs like ‘Athletes Who Is Suck’ and ‘Lo Priest’ suggest the band treats their music as grand therapy sessions, complete with distorted guitars and feedback. The mumbling behind the kinetic frenzy on ‘Fingers 6 Steps Ahead of Our Minds’ creates a new energy, while the band erects a new wall of noise on ‘La Jolla My Armpit.’ The scorching guitars and howling vocals on ‘Mindstab, Forklift’ only add to the wonderful loss of control the band mastered early on in their career.”
Godspeed The Punchline
(Elemental) Used LP $8.00 (Out-of-stock)
“The hodgepodge of sounds at the beginning of ‘Destroy 1998’ promises a manic flurry of music to follow. Indeed, many of the tracks begin with silly, innovative audio experiments. The band’s confident and brash style of noisy indie rock was certainly catching on by 1994. From the hypnotic howling at the beginning of ‘Long End of a Firearm’ to the wonderful cut-and-paste avant noise on ‘Ungalactic,’ the band experiments with more than straightforward angular guitar noise. ‘Outpatient Lightspeed’ and ‘Playboy Stabtone Bloodbath’ pack an album’s worth of punkish energy into a few minutes.” Numbered edition #1082/1500