My only previous experience of Gateshead-based band Marzuraan was the split CD with TenHornedBeast released on Aurora Borealis earlier this year, and my appreciation of ‘Into Endless Battles’, their contribution to that, was perhaps unfairly impaired by my total devotion to TenHornedBeast. In particular, Marzuraan’s vocals seemed jarringly out of place after THB’s immense instrumental drones. Judged by themselves and on their own merits, though, Marzuraan impress me much more favourably.

Five Years Worth Of Fuck All, as the title trenchantly suggests, is a retrospective collection of demos, live tracks, rehearsals and rarities from the first five years of Marzuraan’s existence, presented, more or less, in reverse chronological order from 2007 back to 2002. The album opens with a cover version of ‘After Glow’ by the early 90s psych rockers Loop – Marzuraan put their own original spin on it with fuzzy, lo-fi, almost black metal-style guitar and tribal, punky drums. Although Marzuraan are commonly described as a doom / drone band, the label doesn’t really fit all that well. They have at least as much common ground with post-punk noise rockers like Jesus Lizard, Big Black, Foetus and most especially Amphetamine Reptile bands like Cows, Tar and Helios Creed, as is convincingly demonstrated by the second track, a scorching three-minute rehearsal jam called ‘Muck Bucket’. Dominated by cymbal-heavy drums and rumbling bass, and with nearly inaudible growling vocals, this is as filthy a piece of noisy nihilism as you will ever hear. The live track ‘Moneybox’ is very different – eleven minutes of instrumental feedback-saturated shriek’n’rumble with which Marzuraan go some way towards justifying their drone-rock tag. ‘Turned Inside Out’, the second of the album’s two cover versions, is a live rendition of the Rollins Band song originally released on the 1989 album Hard Volume – bombastic, raging and primitive, but Stu Ellen’s vocals don’t really punch the song home the way Henry Rollins would.

‘Nice Wang’, another live track, was recorded at Northumbria University when Marzuraan were playing a support slot for Julian Cope. This song is significantly more melodic and less harsh than anything else so far, verging on shoegazing, but certainly on the noisier end of that spectrum – like Loop, in fact. The amusingly titled instrumental ‘Bad Flange’ is the longest track on the album, at over 14 minutes, and its slow, sludgy, discordant riffs have the feel of doom pioneers Saint Vitus or Black Flag at their most improvisatory. This song falls between two fences for me, though – it’s not really slow and crushing enough to qualify as extreme doom along the lines of Catacombs, Monument Of Urns, or Moss, but it’s too slow to develop the dynamic momentum of a song like ‘Muck Bucket’. ‘G.M.T.’ is another long, live instrumental, with churning guitar noise, bass chunder and howls of feedback sprawling messily over drum crashes. ‘Martian Deconstruction’ from 2004 is presented in a drum-free mix as a solid slab of guitar and bass drone. By this time, the reverse chronology of the album has made it obvious that Marzuraan have evolved over the past five years away from their sludgy, doom / drone roots towards melody, shorter and more tightly structured songs, and this is by and large no bad thing. ‘Martian Deconstruction’ is more interesting than ‘Bad Flange’, but I prefer ‘Muck Bucket’ to either of them.

The final two tracks were recorded in 2003 and 2002 respectively. ‘Earth 3’, the title an obvious nod to Earth’s seminal 1993 album Earth 2, is a long, loose jam between two overdriven bass guitars – at this point Marzuraan had no guitarist, singer or drummer. ‘HARMed’ is way harsher, almost like power electronics, an experimental composition of choppy reverb effects and cut-up feedback that’s not for the timid.

The packaging of Five Years Worth Of Fuck All is very appealing – a textured gatefold card sleeve with black text and spot varnished graphics. The inside of the sleeve has a detailed Marzuraan timeline and discography. And the Marzuraan logo on the disc is a pastiche of Mayhem’s logo.

Up-and-coming Scottish label At War With False Noise has scored another hit with this release. Although the label is mostly associated with power electronics and industrial noise of one sort or another, releases such as this album, the Luizig CD by Alkerdeel and the imminent vinyl LP Paralyser by Glasgow’s foremost noise rockers Black Sun mean that At War With False Noise is also becoming a name to be reckoned with in the underground extreme metal scene.

www.myspace.com/marzuraan

www.atwarwithfalsenoise.com

www.myspace.com/atwarwithfalsenoise