Usually when you hear about seminal ass-kickers reuniting several years after going tits up, you automatically call bullshit on everyone who says the new album is "as good as the old jams." (The new Helmet record? Please. That Mission of Burma thing on Matador last year? What are you, drunk?) But even the most raving, coked-up Unsane hardliners (i.e., dudes who watch the band's infamous "Scrape" skateboard shit-eaters video at least once a week) are actually right when they swear the legendary NYC throat-stompers have absolutely killed it on Blood Run (Relapse). The band's first album since 1998's Occupational Hazard is a series of ultra-violent prison shankings from the proverbial concrete asylum Unsane calls home; a new noise-rock bible for enthusiasts of terminal discord and scathing dissonance--straight from the genre's resident OGs. Then again, it's not really a surprise that Unsane made it through an extended hiatus with their inimitable talents intact: They've already survived opening for Slayer; getting stabbed almost to death in Vienna in '98 (Chris Spencer required something like 40 staples to keep his intestines in his belly); and playing shows with a broken collarbone (as drummer Vinnie Signorelli--who's pushing 50--did in L.A. back in 2003). "I just strapped it down with gaffer tape, took some painkillers, and arranged the cymbals so I didn't have to move my arm up too high," Signorelli deadpans. "There was no way I wasn't gonna do it--unless my arm was torn off."

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