Long before SUNNO)), BORIS, or 5IVE, when the NEUROSIS boys were just a bunch of scruffy punks, before neat little subgenres like 'drone' or 'ambient' came into vogue, there was SKULLFLOWER.

Adam and the guys at Crucial Blast have picked a real peach with this one. "IIIrd Gatekeeper" is the sound of a band swimming upstream, struggling, battling the questioned looks of confused barflies with volume and no explanation. "Lark's Tongues" sounds like equipment being tortured, emitting waves of sonic evil over intermittent, tribal drum pounding. There was no script for this type of music at the time of recording, no pointless movie audio samples between tracks, no hipster influences to name-drop. This band thrived on people that didn't get it.

These instrumental pieces straddle the line between vile, muscular sonic power and short-circuiting musical agony, begging to be put out of its misery. There are no discernable hooks. Improvisation is implied from time to time, drum and bass tempos falling into tarpits or speeding up independently of the main guitar drones. Guitar tones are caked in howling, wind-tunnel audio muck. The bass lines are pronounced and human-sounding, with abundant nods to Geezer Butler. "Rotten Sun" unleashes one of the most diabolical walls of black noise ever fashioned from man-made equipment. "Can You Feel It" almost sounds like an instrumental version of FLIPPER, overflowing with desperation and a sort of tragic drollness. SKULLFLOWER is not for the faint of heart, but a mandatory education for everybody else.

- Marchman

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