Even in a world where unconventional releases are de rigueur, the rollout of Old Man Gloom’s The Ape Of God was … unique. I did my best to unravel it back in November, but the essentials are as follows: Old Man Gloom told the world they were going to release one album — they even sent out advances of that “one album” to journalists — and then, a week before release, the big reveal: They were really releasing two albums! With the same title! It was actually considerably more complicated than I’m making it sound, and I’m honestly not clear how they imagined it being received in the best-case scenario. The band justified it afterward, saying, “We wanted to trick people into thinking it was only one [album] because the interweb has sucked all the fun out of releasing records and we wanted people to be fucking surprised by something again. At least we tried.” To their credit, it was surprising — but less “the twist at the end of The Usual Suspects” surprising, and more “Facebook has updated its privacy settings” surprising. But I’ll give them points for trying. I’ll give them more points for making an outstanding record. I’m hesitant to say they made two outstanding records though, because the two different albums called The Ape Of God don’t seem distinct enough to exist apart from one another. (This is not helped by the fact that they have the same title and were released on the same day and were lumped together in the same hoax.) If you like one, you will like the other; if you do not like one, you will not like the other. You do not need to buy both to have a satisfying experience, and you might not listen to both in succession anyway. But both are full of pummeling, skyscraping, sludgy, vast, violent noise. You should buy both. –Michael [LISTEN]