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Sissy Spacek, "Epistasis"

cover imageOne look at the sleeve of this 7" gives a good indication of what to expect.  Being a 45rpm disc with 17 tracks total, it’s a good bet that the song list is really irrelevant.  Upon listening, it is pretty much impossible (and unnecessary) to know where the tracks begin and end.  But one thing is sure, it is a metallic grindcore blastbeat noise assault.A Dear Girl Called Wendy

There is little difference notable between the A and B sides here.  Both feature Spacek as a trio, consisting of stalwarts John Wiese on electronics and Corydon Ronnau on vocals, with Charlie Mumma on drums.  Mumma delivers blasts that sound more like machine guns than snare drums, on the second half especially pounding out some mechanized beats, which goes well with Wiese’s electronics, which more closely resemble the sounds at a metal recycling factory than anything else.  Ronnau’s vocals are rather low in the mix, but are the expected guttural jibber-jabber for the genre, though they sound somewhat more processed on the b-side.

In the end, Epistasis is more along the lines of early Napalm Death or Agoraphobic Nosebleed taken to the n-th degree.  What little traditional musicality from those acts has been thoroughly excised, and what remains is the detritus of voice and rhythm that one hears lingering after a massive blow to the head.  Which is a good thing.