4 out of 5

Label: Auris Apothecary

Produced by: DAS (remastered by)

I’d maybe say this is more a release for posterity than actual listening, but: The Butcher was truly short-lived side project from Annabel Lee, and given how truly astounding that work was for its time and for the then-age of its creators, any recorded output of their other endeavors is firstly worthwhile, and then I’d also pitch Churn America as the briefest slice of how thrash/grind can be pretty fun, if you strip away the sometimes frightening drapery. (Accepting that that drapery is part of the appeal, surely…)

The original recording of Churn was, apparently “12 songs clocking in at 6 minutes and 47 seconds,” and Midwest indie music officials Auris Apothecary have done their best to remaster five of those tracks from extremely lo-fi sources, rather humorously dumping the rest – assumedly unsalvageable – onto one single final track, all layered over one another, called Meatgrinder. This could merit an extra star all on its own.

If you’re extrapolating from the above, with 12 songs being less than 7 minutes – 5 (or 6) songs is… less than that; no track on here gets past a minute. However, within those 30/40 second runtimes, there’s… an amazing amount of riffage? And the lo-fi ness sets the screams waaay in the background, allowing mostly just relatively crisp guitar and breakneck drumming to come through, and it’s not an unpleasant sound! Just kinda nutso, of course, but let’s suppose you’re not picking this up on a whim: again, the talent of these kids comes through, but also the supposed humor of the project, done somewhat satirically – like they want to take the piss out of thrash, but can’t quite make themselves not enjoy what they’re playing.

This isn’t to pitch this as the deepest of projects, or a holy grail; again, I’d consider this a ‘for posterity’ recording, but one that I definitely didn’t mind giving a couple spins.