HEAVY SEALS

So the band name is actually spelled Xeaxx Xeaxx but pronounced "Heavy Seals" (I prefer the spelling "Heavy Seals" myself, though if this is a Caroliner-style conceit where you can fill in the blanks randomly - e.g. Death Peace or Teach Meals or Deals Peach - I'll take it), it's a duo of noise master John Wiese and erstwhile Gossip member (?) Brace Paine, and their album Jazz Bust is on the increasingly great Troniks and/or Pacrec (not sure what the difference is) label. 11 tracks of purist noise in 15 minutes, full of metallic clang, speaker-breaking distortion, filtered scuzz, and pretty much every other type of abrasive ear attack. Closest referent is the wire-cutting splatter of Nautical Almanac's most fractured stuff (i.e. not their latest, which is itself great in a much wider, weirder way), though most of the stuff here is more, uh, present - louder, closer, more puncturing, with almost no murkiness or layers - all of this penetrates the skull immediately. The thing I like about noise this good, unpredictable, and insanely busy is how you can listen on two levels at the same time - you can enjoy imagining what the hell kind of physical actions could've created these surgically destructive noises, and at the same time you can easily drool to all the brain-slicing racket like a baby watching its own hand.

mp3:
XEAXX XEAXX - "You Must Eat" from Jazz Bust