Alunared, SLMZK!

On their second record, Alunared speed and tighten up their sturm und drang to almost regular rock tempoes and formats. This doesn't make their sophomore effort any easier to listen to than its predecessor, nor does it make it any less interesting. There's no room to breathe "SLMZK!", and trying to digest everything that's going on will probably send chunks of flaming concrete sprinkled with cayenne up and back into your sinuses. Seriously! I got a nosebleed the first time I listened to this.

"Blood And Muscle" and "Disco Track For Personal Films" start things off in a typically aggro fashion, the former being a staccato, angsty banger, the latter being a more groove-based head-nodder. As far as the more "mellow" tracks go, "(Eye)sore" recalls the more plodding, ethereal moments of "The Death Birds", but a phasing guitar maintains the tension. Larissa Loyva's vocals on "The Shade" bear a striking similarity to those of Swans' Jarboe, and the track is given unexpected texture by a horn section, but the roaming bass and clusterfuck of junkyard percussion and samples that close the song keep you grounded in the band's ethos.

"This Machinery" might be the most developed song Alunared have put out thus far. Ambient synths and clatter drums give way to a droning Atari military march. Singer Jack Duckworth's screamed vocal blasts turn into plainly delivered and (*gasp*) melodic singing:

I hear this voice and it calls me through the telephone
Telling me things that I wish I would have never known

Orchestral, almost regal synthesizers then sweep you up and give you a birds-eye view of the political yet entirely personal dystopias evoked by Alunared's modus operandi. It's a harrowing yet exhilerating trip.

Closing off the album is a re-tooled version of "The Cut-Ups", Alunared's traditional concert closer. Introduced by Duckworth's characteristically acerbic onstage banter and replete with "whoo-ooo-hoo" refrains, the track puts the fear of God into whatever you think electro is, and drives your ass to the dancefloor more out of self-preservation than anything.

So: a rewarding and vital slab o' noise from Vancouver's brightest junk-culture castaways, a record that doesn't command you to smash it up, but manages to ask how you felt as the molotov left your hand.

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