A handful of bent, wavering chords come clattering out the speakers to my right, couple flick-knife scads of screeching feedback throbbing in-between. A wash of spindly guitar unfurled o'er a quiff-skulled, bobbin' bassline. A voice harsh as the crust on a week-old hemorrhoid, yet enchanting as the siren's squawk to a rum-wrecked sailor.

Smiling to myself, nodding the head enthusiastically, the shrill hiss of the swelling dawn simmering at the edges of the window-glass. "This is beautiful" I'm mouthing. "Beautiful…"

Couple hours previous, I'm sat in the kitchen on a too-hard chair with the smoke from a too-thin cigarette scourging the retinas something fierce, examining the CD inlay held open afore me.

Dotted about the glossy paper, sundry curious, disturbing sights; Sharks, Nazis, executions, three-boobed women all Playboy glaze-gaze, merboys and one-eyed soft-focus monkey beasts, faceless forms hung from gallows, garden party socialites and Hitler Youth parades.

Death spectacles, killing machines, abominations. Puffing the cheeks, muttering under my breath; "Jesus save us all…"

Glance at the song titles; "Aphrodite Has Gone Mad", "Not Right In The Head", "Two Shit Icepick"…

Looking up from the case with the yap all skewed to one side, forehead wrinkled some, I'm saying to the fella sleeps in my hallway sometimes; "This is gon' be harsh."

"What is?"

"This." Reaching him the record, The Underwater Fascist by Touchers. On the cover - some manner of slumbering ocean-woman, naked, the seaweed all coiling about her thighs and her arms and the nooks down yonder by the hoo-hah.

He gives it a cursory glance, tosses it back at me. "Never heard of them" says he. "Who are they, pray tell?"

Who they are, I explain, are an American indie outfit fronted and orchestrated by one Ben Brisini, a manic depressive, healthy-living 'musical autocrat' (Press Release says…) from Bozeman, Montana. "Jack Endino's produced it" I inform him. "I assume some sort of claustrophobic, lumber-haulin', grunge-hued sludge or other is the order of the day. Heavy shit, I'd guess - sonically, thematically and spiritually."

Returning the focus to his paperback, he asks; "Can you handle it, d'you think?"

"I dunno" says I, glaring now at my reflection on the underside of the disc itself, red-ring eyes and unshaven jaw all flush with patchy bum-fluff fuzz. "Harsh times of late, you'll be aware. Break-ups, panic attacks, Grindhouse being released as two separate flicks… Last thing a man needs on top of all that is an hour's worth of a bi-polar fella screeching about Nazi sharks and shock therapy."

A shrug. "Maybe it'll be funny. Like that Ricky Gervais stuff about sharks would've found Anne Frank in seconds."

"Maybe…" I say, rising then to my feet. "Maybe…"