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Shellac In Black

What would you do if you met Steve Albini in a dark alley? Really dark.

And if he were playing guitar ... ? Really playing.

Would you stay or would you go, now (or would you just think about the Clash)?

Terraform is a relentless street thug of an album.

The opening track, "Didn't We Deserve A Look At You The Way You Really Are," is a 12-minute endurance test, a cast-off torture device built around a taunting two-note bass pattern. An occasional guitar wisp appears, then fades away quickly, like a mirage, or an anorectic street punk. Tension builds and then discharges -- brief, thrilling releases with riffs so simple they'd sound humdrum in most other contexts. The song pounds the listener with hypnotic primitivism, straddles the line between seduction and boredom.

The rest of Terraform continues that thread in shorter bits, the songs fusing together like recently molten steel. "This Is A Picture" morphs into "Disgrace," "Mouthpiece" and "Canada," all of which feature drumbeats that sound straight out of a clumsy fascist marching band. At other times the militaristic beats are oddly soothing (the solitary pounding drum at the end of "House Full Of Garbage"). But anyone lulled by the blunt, spare pounding will be jarred awake by the loud rush of "Copper," the shortest and most melodic song on Terraform. It's also the closest thing to a love song on an album filled with caustic put-downs and ugly scenes (people who "make love with the doo-doo and the feces on the wall" -- "House Full Of Garbage"). In "Copper," Albini -- forever the hopeless romantic -- sings, "Copper I have a use for you/ It's easy work, it suits you."

Lyrics like that and the almost-parodic Albini-ness of the album often make it hard to take Terraform seriously. It's also sometimes hard to listen to the grating of these somewhat self-indulgent noise-meisters.

But there are enough sublime moments to make the suffering worthwhile -- the brief but magnificent rushes that are part of the otherwise endless opening track, the amazing dynamics created by aural space and the fantastic, brittle sonics.

So stand your ground -- alleys can be interesting.

And Albini's not so tough.

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