"Mankind's crowning achievements - a planet of shit, what the fuck!?" Oakland's SAHN MARU plaintively ask on their pro-voluntary extinction anthem "The Ending." The mood is lightened a bit on "Incomplete," a cover of the latter-era BACKSTREET BOYS tune... Okay, it's not a cover and the mood remains exactly the same. Fast, garbled and angry. SAHN MARU come from the crust-punk school, and their brand of crust-punk is particularly crusty, like day-old crust ripped apart from a slice of angry pizza. Angry pizza full of sores and blisters and mucus and cum, best eaten with a rusty spoon. Bon appetit you crusty fucks.

This genre can be effective when the choruses are particularly molten. Take "Winter" by AMEBIX. The doom-laden chorus goes "WWWWWWIIIIIINTTTTEEEER" and it rocks, evoking some sort of really cold season, possibly winter or fall. Also I can remember how it goes after the song is over. The same is not true of most of the tracks on SAHN MARU's new joint, "Never Too Late." Yes, "Blud of Luna" features an opening intonation by some girl bemoaning the state of the planet before the ensuing growls of death and decay, but this whole record still feels like a sweaty, pock-marked, crusty dick. What does SAHN MARU even mean? Preliminary research indicates it's the name of a Korean food restaurant in Oakland. So this must be their in-house band. North Korean no doubt.

- Shragge

OFFICIAL SITE: myspace.com/sahnmaru

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