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***After a four-year hiatus from rehearsing, recording and performing, during which the members Faxed Head continued mental therapy at the Coalinga Youth Hospice and fought to overcome the ongoing physical and emotional exhaustion wrought by their failed 1991 suicide pact (and a continuing addiction to glue), they reunited to complete this new nine-song album. Their most ambitious recording to date, it is a particularly impressive document, since their advancing mental and physical deterioration leaves them with little ability to play or record. In addition to Chiropractic's startling use of sounds that don't exist in the arsenal of any other death metal outfit on Earth, it also provides perhaps the most intimate glimpse yet of what life is like for these unhappy residents of California's rural Central Valley. Lacking not just physical mobility, but also the quaint mythologies and cultural wellsprings that sustain their Nordic and Austrian counterparts, the Faxed Head are literal prisoners in a wilderness of fast food franchises and corrupt auto mechanics. Accordingly, Chiropractic is an all-grey kaleidoscope of depression, exploitation, sickness, isolation, intolerance, food poisoning, medical malpractice, and agricultural ruin. Early incarnations of the band appeared on limited pressing seven-inch records and compilations, material that was later compiled onto the full-length Uncomfortable But Free CD. After personnel changes, the band recorded the Exhumed at Birth CD (which Metal Maniacs magazine described as "a severely damaged new extreme of metal Oe a sick level of horror and mayhem"). Naturally, a brief tour of Australia followed. |
