Last Exit: The Best of Ausgang

This 22-song compilation has most of what the group released on record, though it's missing a few songs. Collectors who have its Manipulate LP and Los Descamisados mini-album will be glad to see this has most of the songs from its singles, though even so it's missing some of those tracks, like the intriguingly titled "If That's Your Bat, I'm Leaving Town." In the liner notes, Ausgang's Mark (Max) Freeth describes the group as "a post-punk, pre-goth, Stooges/Birthday Party-like nightmare which fused drugs, sex, motorcycles and twisted rock'n'roll in equal measures." There's some accuracy to that, although it looks better on paper than it sounds on disc. The exaggerated theatrical yells, sighs, and mini-shrieks of the vocals sound affected enough to verge on the comical. The relentlessly amelodic guttural riffs, march-of-doom beats, and brooding, disaffected bleak lyrics are both monotonous and not as far from the more critically acclaimed Birthday Party and early Fall records as some would say.