| records |
Together these three men are lethal. They hail from Chicago, home of some great rock bands, such as The Jesus Lizard, Shorty and Shellac, but crush these when it comes to sheer power and intensity. The writing is extremely accomplished, and demands your full attention, or you are likely to get lost in its labyrinthine construction. Their unique brand of instrumental composition has more in common with Russian twentieth century classical music, darkness, density, and dissonance, than it has with most heavy metal or rock music. There is approximately three seconds of beauty on this album, sandwiched between two enormous slices of evil toast (burnt). It's as if they were bullied when they were young, and are now exacting their revenge aurally with these ten tracks of neck-numbing terror. No words just controlled violence. Third song in and your brain begins to cave in under the stress of concentration, whilst gigantic mallets of riffola pound away at your fragile eardrums, but you wouldn't dare hit the stop button. The music is too exciting for that, like light-speed mathematics. American Heritage are the finest executors of hard, complex music, completely untouchable by any other band. Jason Bison |