PainKiller - Execution Ground (1994)^{Release ID: 7458}

Oh wow! After two albums of blending jazzy avant-garde metal with grindcore elements that are too weird to be good, the deathly/thrashy grind has been very much discarded and made this experimental sound even better in their third album Execution Ground. The band consisting of John Zorn (saxophone instead of guitar), Bill Laswell (bass), and Mick Harris (drums) gained more control of their experimentation in these long-a** mighty improvisations...

The lineup show off their powerful talent with occasional guest vocals by Yamantaka Eye, lead vocalist of Zorn's other band Naked City. Oh yeah, Zorn's saxophone is still screechy but more tolerable. And the album cover used in this site is the clean cover as opposed to the original one with the man hung from a tree.

The 3 long improvisations take up the first half of this two-CD offering. I can't really say much about them individually because of how similar they are, but they are perfect for when you wanna chill out in a world of noise (not something I thought anyone would say in a way that makes sense). Then the second disc has ambient remixes of two of those tracks. It's a shame that my favorite track of the trio, "Morning of Balachaturdasi" didn't get the same ambient treatment.

So how does it all exactly compare to those first two Painkiller albums? Well as I've said, there isn't any more of the extreme grind, but those improvisations in the main dish still have heavy strikes, once again bringing out metal from the saxophone instead of the guitar. There are many relentless sections that guide you through the occasional foggy screams, the innovative drumming of Harris, the deep bass pulse of Laswell, and Zorn's saxophone that is, again, excellent and being played well instead of strangled to the bone. This jazzy avant-garde metal sound is so disturbing, it's probably a valid reason for the band's dissolution. Only this time, it's a very pleasant kind of disturbing!

Favorites: All 3 of the main tracks, especially "Morning of Balachaturdasi", though the ambient tracks are great too.