Scattered Smothered & Covered
It's ironic that while Unsane's debut release,Total Destruction, chose to keep their tribal noise grindings fully intact and raw, when they dropped back to indie they added elements to make their music slightly more accessible. That's not to sayScattered, Smothered & Coveredis any less visceral than their previous releases, but if their earlier work hacked into the listener's skull like a rusty saw, this one slices cleanly with a more refined, razor-sharp precision. You don't bleed any less, it's just slightly less painful. Gone is the incessant, driving tribal beat that their original drummer, Charlie Ondras (who died of a heroin overdose), made an Unsane trademark. His replacement, Vinnie Signorelli, provides a more standard rock-oriented thump that makes some of the tunes downright groovy. Were it not for all of the distortion the bass, guitar, and vocals are pushed through,Scattered, Smothered & Coveredmight actually find some FM radio success. Unsane, however, is nowhere near ready to compromise the extreme, bleak noise rock they've gnashed out since 1991. Still, this tightening of their sound is a great step forward for a band that seemed to have reached a musical dead end, and it'll surely prove that they're more than one-dimensional distortion-mongers.--Adem Tepedelen