I first heard these guys on their "An Audio Guide to Everyday Atrocity" release a couple years before for the defunct Mayhem label and must admit I wasn't all that moved.

It was pretty bland for the most part, slammin' yet didn't really bowl me over with an individuality of expression, just one rage after another.

Now with the aptly titled "Violence," their third shot at it and first for TVT continues forward from the savage riff from whence it came and broadens the bore a little bit making for a more interesting listen as far as I'm concerned.

It's almost like listening taking the band Yes, infiltrating their souls with dark demon-like beings and turning 'em loose in the control room… what you get is a twisting, contorting view of a world that's still in dire need of further study.

As far as human consumption goes, hard music followers will eat this up. The vocal ability of this Holt guy isn't unlike what we've heard before with the grunt and growl style mixed in with a relaxed whisper every so often… in fact the music follows the same path, mostly trudging offer rough terrain but staying the course long enough to find a clearing in the distance.

Songs three and four standout nicely in their own technically diverse realm, combining Machine Head-like brutality with Floyd-ish melodies-"For All the Sin," "Dead Like Me," and "Blue Skin," in particular, tear a page right out of the Voi Vod sci-fi sphere with its transient wanderings and vocal couplings.

With more attention being paid to detail and less toward the extreme right, it's a step in the right direction for Nothingface who many might've left for dead already just two albums into what previously seemed to amount to a struggling career.

Released by TVT Records

Review by Vinnie Apicella [va85@columbia.edu] )