Here’s another off the wall noisy alt rock record from Crucial Blast, similar to Black Elk’s recent self titled effort, and like that effort, is a swing and miss despite the bands

Once boasting members of Don Caballero and Zombi (and probably giving readers a rough idea of the band’s sound), Pittsburgh’s (((Microwaves))) is a scrawling, morass of atonal, spastic math rock, punk, fretless bass, programming and nervous vocals. The end result, though admittedly rather unique, is also rather grating to these ears, as I’m sure, like Black Elk, this is more suited to the turtle neck wearing, horn rimmed coffee drinking, arthouse rock types that frequent wi-fi bars and

Me? While I like to consider myself a fairly rounded musical journalist, this sort of brittle, jarring and paranoid noise dressed as rock has no real redeeming qualities above and beyond scene points if I wanted to write for ROlling Stone and drop cool

The truth is though, each time I listed to tracks like ‘Polaris’, ‘Ajeeb Takes the Turk’ or ‘Codex Vortex’, I simply grimace and can’t wait for the record to be over.

By Erik Thomas

[Visit the band's website]

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