4 out of 5

Label: Tizona

Produced by: Kurt Ballou

Holy fartz, you guys: This is a rad blast of “it’s about time.”

After piddling about in screamo, Indianapolis noisters Racebannon made the odd teamup with Mike Mogis for a couple of art-punk long players: In the Grips of the Light and Satan’s Kickin’ Yr Dick In.  To me, Mogis never really “got” Racey’s sound, downplaying the mix into a mushy thing.  At the same time, he was there for or encouraged the group to open up and expand: Racebannon became weird under Mogis.

Fates aligned some years later to pair the group with Bob Weston for Acid or Blood, a fittingly stripped down kick in the rock pants that was another excellent leap forward, but maybe still felt tweaked by their producer’s presence; the disc leaned more toward rock than spazzy hardcore.

Ol’ fate kept a’swirlin, though, landing the ‘bannon with uber loudsmith Kurt Ballou for Six Silk Sisters.  With two minute tracks and a twenty minute runtime, things have certainly changed once again for our boys, but in a way, this is like a grand return: Racebannon sound incensed, arriving with the mad fury that made the opening release of Grips so insane, but scraped clean of clatter and clutter down to noisy, blitz-paced metal.  It sounds like what the group was always aiming for, just sat down with some pentagram inscribed gimcracks and buckets of blood and told to rock out without fear, no worries over loftier intentions or narrative themes.

The simplicity translates to the group’s most catchy tracks – while juxtaposingly their most brutal – and minused some of Acid’s exhaustion by breaking things up with short interludes or, uh, a surf drum solo.  And in case you want to skip to the goods, let the song titles lead the way, helpfully, in the cases above, named Thee Interlude and Thee Solo.

Now even at what only amounts to 7 songs (plus the two mentioned above and closer ___ being some outro noise), there’s some tracks that are better than others, with the disc’s first half’s straight rush giving way to the latter few songs which are a slight notch down, either ending too abruptly or lacking the clear hooks of their lead-ins, but the enrggh is so amped up and the damned disc so rprstable, its only a minor offense.

The boys have seemingly sofead to some other bands hereafter, leaving six___ as their potential farewell.  Absolutely effing fine choice foor abswang song..