ULTRALYD

I've slept on Ultralyd since I got their Load CD last July or so, but the disc has been beckoning from my shelf, sending out a piercing red laser light that keeps burrowing into my memory-addled brain, mostly because muscle-man Kjetil Brandsdal is involved. His lurch-metal trio (of violin/bass/drums) Noxagt are unparalleled, and he's done some great solo noise too, but if i had glanced at the back of the CD before ignoring it in favor of WSOP reruns, I would've realized that horn-torturer Frode Gjerstad is also involved, making Ultralyd a potential monstrosity that I should go to hell for avoiding even for seconds, much less months.

Situation rectified, and Chromosome Gun is a behemoth - a hyper-splurting mash of free jazz, doom metal, punk rock, and sound-spectrum demolition. At times it sounds like Last Exit boxing The Thing, other times like Branca if he was a drill seargant in charge of getting Dylan Carlson in shape. The album's frantic beauty is immediate, but only when I tried to pick out the "noisiest" track to post did I fully comprehend this record's insanity. One track would sound too metal, the next too free jazz, the next too punk, then back to the metal one which suddenly sounded too jazz, while the jazz one now sounded too, uh, i don't know, country? Such is the damage that Chromosome Gun wreaks on perceptive tissues.

I finally settled on "Pink Mood," which contains most of the Ultralyd arsenal - a deboweling bass shake, Gjerstad's proto-Stooge blurps, Anders Hana's treble-wrench, and mostly, the insane drumming of Morten J. Olsen, which splatters across the record like projectiles after a competitive eating contest. But...it turns out this is already available on Load's Ultralyd page ...so instead here's a more hardcore explosion...but don't stop there, the entire brain-breaking record is worth losing your drool to...

mp3:
ULTRALYD - "Glottality" from Chromosome Gun