The Italian band Consumer make no pretense at all about what they’ve done on their self-titled debut EP. They confess that it is “ugly music”: “In this record we’ve put not only our musical influences, but the life-related ones as well. Its deformities and its horrors, its disharmonies and its incommunicability. We’re three different people who are united by the fact of being constantly disoriented in this world. We try to contain the problem with almost unplayable breakdowns, feedbacks and screams.”

There’s much more to the music than unplayable breakdowns, feedbacks, and screams, but what it all adds up to is mutilating punishment — maniacally destructive at times, noxious and diseased at others, and completely oppressive and hopeless at still other times. The impact is often electrifying, but just as often it threatens to beat you senseless and choke you lifeless. Continue reading »