ARSON ANTHEM

Holy bleeding fuck! Call it a New Orleans supergroup if you want, but screamer Mike Williams (EYEHATEGOD) and guitarist Philip Anselmo (PANTERA, SUPERJOINT RITUAL) won't be able to hear you — they're too busy cranking their amps to 12 and laughing gleefully as every needle in the recording studio spikes into the red and stays there. ARSON ANTHEM is a loud, feral, scabrous, unhealthy and spastic blast of bilious hardcore the way people used to do it. This is the hardcore of vomit-flecked UK crusties twenty years ago, the punk of drug-addled degenerates mopping blood off their arms with pages of the Profane Existence catalog in a dilapidated squat in Philly or New York or Portland. This is ten minutes of dirt rubbed into a wound, and you'll have just enough energy left after the first pummeling to go back for seconds.

Think DISCHARGE, NEGATIVE APPROACH, early NAPALM DEATH or HELLHAMMER (a comparison that sounds all the more valid if you listen to this up against that band's recently-released demos),in all their anarchic, untutored, break-your-jaw glory, making the kind of racket they want to hear without caring one iota for you or what you think. The hell of it all is, as much as it sounds like they threw all their gear down the basement stairwell and then dove headfirst after it, there are still memorable bits here, actual hooks amid the beatdown, tiny little breathing spaces here and there that hint that the whole thing is planned, and they do know what they're doing — which only makes it that much scarier.

This is exciting stuff — ARSON ANTHEM has the potential to become as important as anything these guys have done before. It's grind without mindlessness, chaos controlled with a barbed-wire fist, and it's addictive enough that it ought to come with a bottle of bleach and a note to send your next of kin. Awesome.