Pitchfork

Photo by Rod Searcy

Brooklyn/Chicago band These Are Powers, featuring ex-Liars member Pat Noecker on "prepared bass", caused a commotion on 2007 debut Terrific Seasons that nearly lived up to their self-bestowed genre name, "ghost-punk." The album's No Wave skronk, early Sonic Youth clanging, and proto-industrial aggression all clatter around in the same abandoned factory building on "Chipping Ice", the first track to surface from the band's forthcoming Taro Tarot EP, again due on Hoss. Atlas Sound/Deerhunter dude Bradford Cox, who has also recorded for the Atlanta/Washington, D.C.-based label, once wrote on his blog about being given one ice chip an hour to suck on during a recovery from surgery; These Are Powers don't have anything so placid or delicate in mind. Opening with a rolling drum solo and dentist's-drill guitar noises, "Chipping Ice" sounds more like the three-piece are at work obliterating an iceberg, or else carving out some demented ice sculpture. The chorus of coughing that goes on for 10 seconds near the beginning of the track almost spoils the whole thing, but then a crunching bass line asserts itself, while guitarist Anna Barie shrieks something that sounds like either "hurt them all" or "help them all," or both. Have I got the Metallica record for these dudes.

MP3:> These Are Powers: "Chipping Ice"
[from the Taro Tarot EP; due in April on Hoss]