Sutcliffe Jugend – “With Extreme Prejudice” – [Cold Spring Records]

Noise consisting of static, mutilated samples, synth torture, screamed profanity, howls and screeches. Distorted spoken words over the track and varied textures and tonal qualities keep the album interesting. With track names like “Fuckrage” and “I Have Kissed This Sick Sick World Goodbye” this is unmistakably an angry noise album, and a good one at that.

Tracks 2 and 7 have no intelligible words and are strong. Some tracks, like tracks 4 and 10, start in a good place but don’t really go anywhere from there. Track 8 is genuinely creepy. Track 9 I like as well, sounds like drunk men crying. Track 11 starts as good ambient doom electronica and builds to a pleasing wall of noise.

Tenderizor – “Touch The Sword” – [Sick Sick Sick]

Tenderizor is what you get when several gifted musicians from the Albuquerque noise scene form an Iron Maiden tribute band. It mostly feels like classic Heavy Metal, but somehow Tenderizor has managed to make this sound very fresh.

Lots of good times hanging around in intros and outros, dual lead guitars delivering baroque hammer-on madness or shimmering in unrelenting feedback riffage. The lead singer also delivers with cookie monster growls and classic big hair metal shreakage.

Mattress – “El Dorado” – [Malt Duck]

Warbled lounge singing, hoots and hollers over drum machine and synth loops. Electric guitar makes an appearance as well. There’s definitely a late-night feel to this music, Las Vegas skid row blues in an empty neon-lit casino. The title track is a favorite and has a fun psychedelic wobble to it. The B side doesn’t feel as strong, it’s more downtempo, strung out and introspective.

Black Bug – “Shard of Glass” – [Hozac Records]

3 short low-fi synth-pop/punk tunes from the mysterious Black Bug. All 3 songs feature chunky analog synth and drum machine beds. “Shard of Glass” and “Machine” feature a female vocalist singing/shouting unintelligible lyrics and strike me as absolutely perfect California nighttime freeway driving music. “Police Helicopter” is probably what the autonomous killer drones are singing to themselves as they fly over Iran and soon, the US. Aggro music for aggro metallic people. Love it.

Nerv, The – “Decivilized” – [Self-release]

Medium-fidelity recording of prototypical bay area politically-minded punk rock. They have songs about police brutality, beer, BPA, riding bicycles (two, actually!), queer rights, US Foreign Policy, propaganda, and shallow “Marina Folks.” Like a lot of punk rock I’m sure they’re very intense live but it’s much more difficult to bring that level of intensity to studio recordings. When they succeed, like on tracks 2 and 9 (FCC language!), they’re a lot of fun. Watch out for language, tracks 4, 5, 6, 9, 11, 13, 14 have FCC language.

Mincemeat Or Tenspeed / Drums Like Machine Guns [coll] – [Badmaster]

Two noise bands on a split LP from Badmaster records.

The Drums Like Machine Guns contribution (censored dude side) is feedback guitar vamping and distorted echoing bass drum and vox. Track 2 is probably my favorite on this side for its detuned guitar chording that degenerates into electronic fuzzy video game doom pulses. Many of the tracks are strong but sound fairly typical of the harsh noise genre, feedback and static the bricks and mortar in a wall of sound.

The Mincemeat or Tenspeed contribution (kitteh side) has more musical elements both melodically and rhythmically. Although split into 3 tracks they all track through nicely if you feel like playing a sidelong. It starts out with a simple melody of repeated notes which is manipulated in various ways over the three tracks and is ultimately deconstructed into noise. That might sound a little tedious but the manipulations are varied enough to keep it interesting.

All tracks instrumental noise, FCC clean.

Oneohtrix Point Never – “Replica” – [Mexican Summer]

Ambient sonic confections from Brooklyn-based musician Daniel Lopatin. Purposeful loops swimming in retro synth wash. Low-key enough to mix or serve straight. All tracks instrumental and FCC-clean. Track 1 gives a good impression of the album sound and is strong. Tracks 5 and 6 curiously sound less like the rest of the album and are also favorites.

Esplendor Geometrico – “Veritatis Splendor” – [Geometrik Records]

Repetitive, busy drum machine beats over spaced-out sampler vamping with a dark industrial flavor. Almost all tracks are walking tempo and feature a prominent backbeat with Latin elements. When it works best, like on tracks 2 and 5, it creates an interesting juxtaposition between the very mechanistic drum track and the extended sampler frobbing. Some tracks, track 3 in particular, seem like something that could have been on the B side of Ministry’s Land of Rape and Honey, except Veritatis Splendor was released in 1994, nearly 6 years after the Ministry album.

Esplendor Geometrico is a Spanish industrial band, they’ve been active since 1980, have a long discography, and are still making sounds. Since 1994 they have been a duo consisting of Arturo Lanz and Saverio Evangelist. A listen to their discography on their website at http://www.geometrikrecords.com/esplendor shows that Veritatis Splendor is a departure from their typically noisier and harder-edged sound.