Immortal - Pure Holocaust (Osmose, 1993)
That album title is a bit "yikes". Black metal is like American IPA or pizza. It's all pretty much the same, and it's generally pretty good, but sometimes it's really good. This is definitely one of the Really Good Black Metal albums. Punky trashy hateful walls of sound, fuzzy trempicked wonky power chords and a constant white rush of drum blasts. There's absolutely no solos, which is very good news. It's not quite as hilariously lo-fi as some classic Norwegian BM but it does sound like it was recorded in a wooden shack on knackered practice amps (and it probably was). Unlike something like Transylvanian Hunger, there's even shoegazy, melodic, wall of sound moments of prettiness thanks to the ridiculous intensity of the thing. It's not overt, but it's in there. To be honest it sounds completely stupid and that's good. No one takes black metal seriously. No one ever did.
Squarepusher - Go Plastic (Warp, 2001)
I went back to my childhood home for the first time in years and picked up about 30 CDs from a big crate in my bedroom. I was surprised by how scuffed they all were. These CDs have seen some serious play. Which is interesting, because if I heard Go Plastic today, I'd probably play it once or twice and then never again. It's fun but hardly world changing. But when you're 16 and CDs are the equivalent of £100 each or something you've got to get your money's worth. So every single last track on this album is burned in to my brain. Every sub bass line and every breakbeat and every swoosh. It's Squarepusher at his most no-nonsense. I saw him live the same year as I got this album and that set was a lot messier. This is nowhere near as crazy or distorted as early Venetian Snares or Soundmurderer or Shitmat or other contemporary breakcore. My Red Hot Car is a banger, and is pretty much a commercial garage track but with a silly breakdown in the middle. Greenway's Trajectory goes in to a savage vacuum cleaner wall noize freak-out which is cool. A lot of the other tracks are landfill breakcore. It could have been a 12".
Will Haven - WHVN (Rebellion, 1999)
Will Haven are one of those bands I've been meaning to 'get in to' for years. This is exactly the kind of album I should have loved as a teenager but overlooked because it wasn't Tool or some other boring dross. WHVN is chugging and sludgy, with vaguely nu-metally drop-d riffs a-plenty. It also has kissing cousin similarities with their contemporaries and tour mates, Deftones, particularly through the 'soring' flange drenched walls of lead guitar over the detuned chugging. Perhaps there's nothing particularly special about any particular element, but combined it's fantastic and familiar and ugly. The chugging guitar walls are satisfying and addictive, and it's great when they properly get locked in to a good riff ad infinatum like on Slopez. As an album though, it's too long and unwieldly and with at least one questionable track in the embarrassing Ministry-lite industrial plop of I've Seen My Fate (Appliance Mix), which should have been tucked away after 20 minutes of silence like every metal album in the 90's seemed to do.