Eyeswithoutaface

It's fitting that Warguts, which is so conceptually concerned with the physical and emotional horrors of conflict, was released on Remembrance Day. While most remember this anniversary with felt poppies, Toronto, ON psychedelic sludge outfit Eyeswithoutaface prefer grotesquery to nostalgia, as the album art indicates: a soldier, dog tags clearly visible, tries in vain to hold his guts inside after a terrible abdominal wound. While vocalist Max Deneau has become known for his confrontational performance style, it's his clean singing on Warguts that has the most impact, cutting through the thick distortion and swarming guitar violence, the machine guns of the drumming to deliver lyrics, through a voice thick with reverb, that convey regret and loss as much as disgust. "Dead Friends" is a searing number and "Grotesque Tableau" ends the album on a crushingly low note. If the idea of hallucinatory, spastically aggressive industrial sounds fascinating, Warguts is definitely a record to check out.