I clearly remember holding Unsane’s Scattered, Smothered & Covered in my hands, many, many years ago. Its blood splattered cover caught my attention. So cool, and they didn’t play death metal. Anyway, the band had some ups and downs in their career, with Relapse recently releasing this Best Of as the most current up. It includes tracks from their singles collection on Matador Records from way back in 1991, to tracks from their last album on Relapse, Occupational Hazzard and everything in between.

Thank god this band is still in the game. Or back in the game, ‘cause after Chris Spencer’s almost fatal mugging in Austria, Unsane was almost done for. Big city noise to me is one of the must underrated styles of heavy music. Helmet, Janitor Joe, Melvins, Barkmarket, Neurosis, hell even Sonic Youth released stunning material throughout the years.

Unsane belong in this line up. Distorted bass, distorted vocals, distorted guitars and noise, noise, noise. Unsane is the shortcut between a fist and an eye.

Hardcore fans will probably already have most of the tracks on this release. What they probably don’t have is all the video (“Sick”, “Body Bomb”, “Alleged”) and live footage on the bonus dvd that comes with the album. Don’t hope for licked MTV crap but expect underground stuff that works well with the noise coming from the stage. Although their video for “Scrape” has been very popular on MTV, mostly thanks to the numerous crashing skaters in it (and yes, some do have to be scraped of the sidewalk). So read the liner notes, enjoy the truly sick photography, listen to the tracks, watch the dvd and you are kinda up to date.