Like a gang of mohawk- and bullet-belt-wearing undead just arisen from a moist plot in Mt. Hope Cemetery, Blüdwülf is too busy raising hell to have time for things like production values. Of course, the ratty recording style exemplified on the band’s debut full-length is exactly what bandleader Jimmi Sinn is aiming for. Sinn hits his target spot-on, reviving the punk and hardcore of Discharge, GBH, and The Exploited like he performed one of Aleister Crowley’s incantations so that Satan would place the true sound of 1981 in his bandmembers’ hands. What separates Sinn’s effort, however, is his underlying love for pre-eminent thrash trend-setters like Voivod and Celtic Frost (with a little of Venom’s trashiness and Priest/Maiden/King Diamond-inspired operatic melody thrown in for good measure). Just as Sinn envisioned it, Blüdwülf sounds like a punk band beginning to come apart from attempting the precision and endurance of metal. Sinn has that ultra-rare knack for being able to tailor his band’s presentation from head to toe and still come off sincere. But Blüdwülf doesn’t convince on novelty value alone -- guitarist Dave of the Dead burns the fretboard with chug-chug riffing that shows he’s a thrasher at heart just letting his inner metal demon emerge. Thanks largely to him, Cryptic Revelations provides a righteous, playfully nihilistic soundtrack for the long, shrieking trip to hell --- or just to the grocery store.

--- Saby Reyes-Kulkarni

Diehard fans onboard from the beginning may still insist that Pavement’s first album, Slanted and Enchanted, has had the most sustained impact of any album in the band’s catalog, but Wowee Zowee, the group’s third full-length, is arguably where Pavement showed once and for all that it meant business. Even if “business” meant a literal double-dose of wise-ass irony, on Wowee Zowee, Pavement’s lo-fi, fuck-all approach to production intersected as perfectly as it ever would with the band’s increasingly ambitious songwriting. A wildly varied masterpiece dropped head-first into the sweaty furor of grunge/alternative that had dominated the American musical landscape up until the time of its release (1995), the original 18-song program plays so seamlessly that it’s hard to justify adding anything else. But fans familiar with Matador’s lavish re-vamping of the entire Pavement catalog know the drill by now and will want to eat up the oodles of extra tracks, particularly the dozen or so live/radio session recordings --- especially as a Pavement reunion looks ever more unlikely as we approach the 10th anniversary of the band’s premature and unfortunately anti-climactic demise.

--- Saby Reyes-Kulkarni