Burmese - Lun Yurn

This is certainly by far the most violent release I've heard this week. Burmese are a five-piece from San Francisco, apparently, although all the text in the artwork is in Japanese except the band's names - Mike, Mike, Mark, Weasel and Tissue. I can't help but wonder if Tissue is his actual name or an elective pseudonym, and if it is the latter, why he went for it. I have this mental image of some Cali crust/powerviolence kid being all like, "It be cuz I cleans things, yo". Onto the record at hand, though...this is some frantic stuff!  Everything's in the red all the time and it's just full-blown nastiness. Kind of like if Man is the Bastard had more of a Japanese noise influence maybe? On this release the line-up allegedly consists of nothing but two bassists, two drummers and a singer, but to be honest I'd never have guessed that if it didn't say in the press release because the recording is quite trebly. Certainly quite a frantic and brutal sound for such a group, though. The first song on the second side sounds like Swans kicking the shit out of Whitehouse or something; the influences are pretty varied here...anything atavistic goes, but by and large stop-start, slightly mathy powerviolence is the order of the day. You'll be hard pressed to find an angrier LP this year.