3 out of 5

Label: Tizona Records

Produced by: Merzbow, Racebannon

I don’t know how this happened, but this team up between Merzbow and Racebannon… should be louder?

Purportedly a remix of Racebannon’s ‘Satan’s Kickin’ yr Dick In,’ it’s worth noting that RCBN has, like, nine different songs named that, so which one actually is the source of this remix is beyond me.  And without knowing that, I would have likely guessed that this was a jam session and not one band taking on another’s track, because the resultant noise sounds more like a logical mash of the two: Merzbow’s beat-heavy wash with Racebannon’s proclivity for thrash.  And this could serve as a valid representation of both sides of this LP, which may also just be one long remix since the tracks flow into one another…

And yet: not loud enough.  A big ol’ beat dominates everything, along with tones of lovely noise and maybe some heftily distorted screams, but it’s not until near the end of the A-side’s ten minutes or so that that starts to percolate into something as violent as one could imagine from brewing these two bands together, with, like, tape loops and further distortion added into the mix.  The B-side carries this forward and so edges out A in terms of effectiveness, with the pounding drum fading behind layers and layers of manipulated noise, but it does cyclically wrap back around to, mainly, the beat that kicked things off.

Interesting, but, for all its volume, less than what our imaginations could’ve cooked up for this.