The most recent repress of Sexless / No Sex on Prank, with digital download. Back in print on vinyl after a long absence...

A solid kick in the almonds for anyone that posits that the West Coast isn't still producing some of the fiercest hardcore on the planet in the 'power violence' vein, Iron Lung are back with their new full length, their first on Prank, and I'm immediately struck by the hyper-detailed black and white album artwork from none other than Rudimentary Peni singer/outsider genius Nick Blinko. Blinko's nightmarish portrait of a chubby, bat-winged reaper sets an unsettling tone that carries over into Sexless/No Sex's tales of medical horror and biological duress. I've been digging Iron Lung's brutal blastcore for years, a seemingly spartan duo of drums and guitar that unleashes a vicious whirlwind of extreme hardcore that belies their small numbers, and I think this is the band's most focused, powerful album that they have created so far.

Their scorching hardcore draws from the short-n-savage modes employed by Cali HC masters Infest, Crossed Out, Despise You and Man Is The Bastard, but like their compatriots in Japan, SU19B, Iron Lung reshape this form of hardcore into a sound uniquely their own, a tightly constructed assault of hardcore riffs, stop-on-a-dime blastbeats, medical malpractice themed lyrics, lumbering bonebreaking dirges, and fucked dissonance that rips yer skull off in 20 minutes flat. Ultrafast thrash alternates with precision aimed mutant doom, plodding staggering riffs and atonal guitar dissonance, cracked angular melodic figures, all wound together into a blazing prog-damaged blastcore that ends with album closer 'Cancer', where Iron Lung spin their terrifying submission to cell-destroying disease via a machinelike hypno riff that had me thinking of Godflesh and Dutch trance batterers Gore in the same breath...at least, up until the last few seconds of frenzied blastbeats and guitar noise that drop the curtain on this motherfucker of an album. Mondo recommended.