4 out of 5

Label: UgEXPLODE

Produced by: Weasel Walter

The Flying Luttenbachers forever evolve. While I associate their sound with the version run by Weasel Walter during the Skin Graft years, that, too was only a glimpse of a thing that’s been churning through the noise underground since the early 90s, spinning off from the free-jazz of co-founder Hal Russell to encompass free-everything at various points, and shuffling through a roster that’s evidence of that – members plucked from straight jazz, and metal, and rock, and so on. The special sauce of the Luttenbachers is something evasive I’d have trouble specifying: it’s a structure I’d generally refer to as a collective under Weasel’s direction, but the band somehow avoids that distinction: I always hear it as a band, and the identities that bring each album into reality are subsumed by that.

Perhaps that’s helped by the loose, world-destructing, cyclical narrative that’s being told, but I think it’s just engrained in the group’s DNA, which demands a sort of identity-less abeyance to the music, which equally prevents the Luttes from sounding like improv wank.

I don’t love every album, but I love it.

Saying all of this, Losing The War Inside Our Heads – album 17 – is another shift for the group. As suggested by referring to ‘the Skin Graft years’ above, there are relative clumps of FL musical eras, and besides this album taking place as Weasel moves from NY musicians to Chicago ones (the new team showcased on Spectral Warrior Mythos 2, and playing on the second track here), there’s a unique vibe to this album, with every song representing a slightly different take on what the forthcoming years might hold. …And is this the first full album on which – besides track 2 – Weasel played every instrument? Did that impact the composition approach? (Certainly.) Does it suggest something for the future? Who knows! All of this, in context of the Lutes history, makes for an incredibly exciting listen.

Without that context, it’s simply some badass instrumental shit, if not always the most seamless listen.

I think the two more difficult chunks to approach are our openers: my brain simply isn’t smart enough to comprehend the completely off-timed drumming of The Solution Is The Problem, but as Weasel layers onto his beat, the track becomes a brilliant piece of herky-jerk, rocking and completely discombobulating at the same time. It’s also the track where this being a solo work feels most evident, though, with a kind of artificial divide between elements. It’s questionably purposeful (Walter’s being doing production / recording for too long for it not to be), but I’m kind of half-in / half-out on the effect.

Excruciation, on which bassist Luke Polipnick and drummer Charlie Werber join, has a smoother application of the math rock found on Spectral 2, but the song is also composed of stop and start sections which makes it hard to completely get in to.

These opening tracks are a pair: the mechanistic patchwork of Solution; and the seasoned spazz-rocking of Excruciation, broken up into parts, kind of forcing the listener out of any expectations.

…Which then makes sense that we’d get the most “typical” Luttenbacher freak-out with Id Vomit, followed up by a paced, funeral march – Et Exspecto Resurrectionem Mortuorum movement 5 – and then something that kind of stews these different approaches together in epic fashion, for the appropriately titled closer, Crawling 1000 Meters Across A Cold Stone Floor Towards The Forbidden.

That title is an m.o.: Losing The War Inside Our Heads is kind of a longer experience than other Luttenbachers discs, keeping immediate noise-rock satisfaction at bay and dragging the listener along on a journey before finally letting loose in a burst (Id Vomit is the shortest track), only to dial it back again for a march towards some unknown monolith – the future of the Luttenbachers sound.

I am totally on board for all of this.