Juneau

Floating around somewhere in the post/space rock continuum in the late '90s, and generally making good use of its location, on its nine-song debut Juneau makes a strong claim for further notice The band's particular spin was a sharp one that lent them distinction — rather than post-blissout cascading or goth-tinged glowering, Juneau drew on the sheer violence that one can hear in the later Loop records. Pummeling drums, guitars kept far away from soothing effects pedals in favor of eardrum-torturing scrapes and stabs, above all a sense of barely controlled menace — all this went into the group's work, and it shows. There's not even the weirdly pretty element of strings as with Godspeed You Black Emperor! in terms of balance, and arguably Juneau are much less predictable in the end than the Canadian collective. Opening track "Hassidic Assassin" is the longest and most in-your-face of them all, the there-then-not drumming smacking through the speakers when it does fire up, a bristling, teeth-grinding guitar loop setting things on edge, steadily building towards an amazing climax, freaked out and drawn out for all its worth. It's a pretty bold move to put such an obviously strong song at the start of the record — it would have been a perfect closer — but the trio keeps up the brooding intensity throughout, lurking throughout each of the remaining tracks. Even calmer tracks — and they are there, the quite short "Kessel" and the immediately following "Under 30 Ft. of Water" being the two most noteworthy — don't so much zone out as put away the knives for the time being. Two songs, "Harmon Beat Theater" and "...Art 2," essentially function as another long number to rival "Hassidic Assassin" in its threat and power, while "Least Concise Speaker," the actual album ender, makes for a nicely vicious way to go.