Point Blank

Point Blank wears its pedigree on its sleeve. Nailbomb's first -- and only -- studio album combines the thrash-metal fury of Sepultura with the robotic industrial clangor of Fudge Tunnel in more or less equal proportions, though the end product boasts slightly more Fudge overall than Sep, which may be slightly surprising considering that nearly the entire Sepultura lineup is present on the guest list -- both Andreas Kisser and Igor Cavalera are credited. Then again, there's also Dino Cazares of Fear Factory and Ritchie Bujnowski from Wicked Death, so the industrial and metal factions are pretty evenly balanced. The jacket sleeve picture -- a female Viet Cong suspect with a U.S. soldier's gun to her head, and the credits that, among other things, direct a "f*** you" toward "fake hippies," "Lenny Kranivitz," and "Skinhead O'Connor," give some indication of what to expect and, truly, Point Blank doesn't disappoint in the energy department. There isn't much here by way of melody, but Nailbomb does have a mean punk streak, a full complement of relentless grinding riffs, and an industrial-strength percussive roar. The lyrics are uniformly nihilistic and the album is riddled with left-field samples that add a disorienting, dehumanizing texture -- ranging from vocal snippets taken from Henry, Portrait of a Serial Killer to the sounds of Max Cavalera beating up on his washing machine and Alex Newport slamming the brakes on a broken-down old car he drove at the time the album was being made. Nailbomb's aesthetic may be lo-fi (everything except the guitars and drums was recorded in Cavalera's house), but there's no quarter given when it comes to the ass-kicking that is full-on malevolent from the get-go. Cavalera and Newport wrote all the songs here, except for a cover of Doom's "Exploitation." Point Blank is abrasive, in your face, and loud as hell with the lid off. Too bad Nailbomb didn't live long enough to follow it up. ~ Leslie Mathew