Saddled with a terrible and misleading name that makes them sound like some sort of manic grindcore wannabes, Crush Kill Destroy are in fact an intriguing but occasionally exasperating exercise in post-Slint math rock. The seven lengthy songs on their second album stretch out between five and 12 minutes, with extended passages of weirdly tuned harmonic twinkling, not unlike Sonic Youth’s more placid moments, separating the aggressive thrust and tricky time-signature shifts of the heavier parts. So, fans of June of 44, Polvo, the For Carnation, etc., etc., etc., will find much to like here. The drawback is guitarist Brian Hacker’s screamingly pretentious, obtuse lyrics and the irritating affectations of his vocal style, which sounds like some kind of unholy cross between the yowling of Can’s Damo Suzuki and that annoying bored mumble that Lou Reed started speaking his lyrics in starting with New York. Luckily, Hacker’s vocal contributions per song tend to be relatively brief, but he’s sufficiently annoying as a vocalist that if Crush Kill Destroy decided to become a purely instrumental group in the future (à la Do Make Say Think or Explosions in the Sky), their next album would automatically be improved by about 100 percent. – Stewart Mason
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