16 BITCH PILE-UP “Seeping Reaper” (Hung Like A Horse?!)

These ladies have been burying strangers and magnetic tape deep in their cavernous industrial lair for years now and their cathartic predatory improv mode still freewheels leagues above the limbs of lesser drone broods, so it was great news/fortune to have this hot pink C60 show up one day. HLAH?! has a habit of sitting on material for years before releasing it, which could be construed as frustrating for some but in this case the delay transformed a basic raw noise document into a semi-crucial historical artifact, as both sides here showcase the original and long-dead 16 BPU pentagrammic five-piece line-up in action. What’s strangest is that despite the extra players the sound is almost sparser than the current trio formation, with tape crawl and metallic creaks ringing inside basements of negative space. The A side is swampier, swelling with gross heat and green-eyed drone bog, recorded live in Columbus, OH in ’05, while the B was tracked at the Flywheel in West Mass the same year, though it’s far bleaker and emptier…sampled voices echo against numb banks of hiss and silence. Weird stuff, and comes with a classic killer cover of deranged faces getting knifed repeatedly. More freaky bloodletting from the Bitch Pile.