March to the Sea
marks an ending and a beginning for the Montreal-based no wave chaos-bearers
AIDS Wolf
. While they've been touring as a trio for nearly a year, this set, cut in late 2009, is their final recording as a quartet with guitarist
Myles Broscoe
. Vocalist
Chloe Lum
, drummer
Yannick Desranleau
, and guitarists
Alex Moskos
and
Broscoe
worked with
David Bryant
at Montreal's
In the Pines
studio; the album was mastered by
Weasel Walter
in the U.S. Musically, the six originals here reflect a more compositionally oriented approach. This doesn't mean
are much more accessible, however. Their extremities in dissonance, distortion, atonality, and shambolic playing are all a permanent part of the
aesthetic. This is music as action, defiance, and provocation. But there are more discernible "song" forms present in this mix -- check the repetitive riff on
"Wet Winds"
; the vocal contains an actual refrain. On
"Suck Is Happiness,"
one guitar solos while the other plays an angular, in-the-red bassline vamp. Drums offer a consistent space for
Lum
's vocal scree to center itself on. It's only two minutes and 13 seconds long, but feels like half an hour. Yeah, that is a good thing. The highlight of this 23-minute long "album" is its final track, a ten-minute cover of
Throbbing Gristle
's
"Very Friendly,"
completely reimagined and far more aggressively delivered. This isn't an "industrial" take on the tune, it's more as if
DNA
met
Teenage Jesus & the Jerks
and performed as a group encore on the fly at a gig. It's nearly unbearable to listen to the insane guitar pyrotechnics in the middle of the track with
screaming, howling, declaring, and just letting her voice ramble as an eight-note pattern asserts and reasserts itself throughout, but fans of
TG
Wolf Eyes
should love this. According to
Skin Graft
,
are also releasing a collection of remixes of this tune. As on their previous recordings,
's sound on
allows for no middle ground; you either love it or laugh at them for it because it's so extreme it feels like a
Ren & Stimpy
cartoon gone horribly wrong -- either way, they win. ~ Thom Jurek