Human Animal

After a year of non-stop touring in support of 2004’s Burned Mind, Wolf Eyes were ready; seasoned to travel through horrible new areas of sound. During one four-week period at the dawn of ‘06, they laid down the ideas that would shape the new album in their studio, the Terror Tank. This new slab is the first with Mike Connelly (of Hair Police and the Gods of Tundra label) replacing Aaron Dilloway. Though he no longer tours with the band, Dilloway remains involved and helped to mix the new record with BMG (who also did the deed on Burned Mind).These songs are rotten with metal, reeds, consciousness-erasing islands of black doom; bass-heavy rippers, late-night free-terror jams, afflicted dog-hearts, underwater crabs: pure mayhem. The new double bass attack is showcased on “Human Animal” and “Rusted Mange” with scraping strings and a full terror-shriek workout re-organized by Dilloway. New directions are countered by “Rationed Rot,” which revisits the eerie Throbbing Gristle-esque vocal deployment that dates from Wolf Eyes’ Dread LP. The album also features the band’s first ever cover song: a dead-on rendering of No Fucker’s rotten hXc anthem, “Noise Not Music,” which closed out a lot of shows on Wolf Eyes’ recent European tour. As ever, Wolf Eyes will be living on the road, with Australian and American tours in the works, and more on the horizon.

The Sub Pop noise group returns with another collection of tracks exploring the cycle of tension and release.

Human Animal, Wolf Eyes' first album with Hair Police's Mike Connelly (who replaced Aaron Dilloway as a touring member of the band), polarizes the band's frenzied sounds and cavernous quiet even more dramatically than Burned Mind, which interspersed bludgeoning noise with respites of near silence.