Various Artists: Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! A Music War (7)

It's one of the great unsung novelty concepts in rock right now: The three installments of Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!—Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! The Record, Son Of Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!, and Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! A Music War—each fit dozens of brutal punk and noise songs onto a single seven-inch single. Of course, the title is derived from the fact that in the five to fifteen seconds generally allotted to each track, there's little time for bands like Dismal Marsh Gas, Godstomper, and Excruciating Terror (there are 73 acts in all on A Music War) to say more than what sounds like, "Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!" Not that you can tell what anyone is trying to say on most of these 84 (!) songs anyway: Final Conflict's "Promise Keeper," for example, may be about the Promise Keepers movement, but the lyrics sound like, well, "Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh!" And that's as it should be. A few nationally known acts (Melt-Banana, MK Ultra) pop up on A Music War, but good luck keeping track of which song is which; besides, the joy of Bllleeeeaaauuurrrrgghhh! A Music War is its dizzying repetitiveness, as well its participants' occasional attempts to deviate from the formula. It's an essential novelty. (Slap-A-Ham, P.O. Box 420843, San Francisco, CA 94142-0843)