Album Of The Week: Empty Flowers Six

The first song on Six, the first album from the Connecticut band Empty Flowers, begins with a rising, chiming drone: Single-chord guitars wrapping themselves slowly around a metronomic drum beat, intensity gradually rising, no words beyond a few barely-audible mumbles buried deep in the track. And then, two and a half minutes in, there's a split second of silence, and the track roars back in with the first clearly audible word of the album. That word is "FUUUUUCK." It's a real fists-up moment and an apt introduction for a band who already knows how to mix deep trance-drone repetition with serious kickass rock fury. It's a cathartic thrown elbow of an LP, but one that keeps twisting and contorting, never content to find the simplest and most traditional route toward detaching your retina.