Best Left Unsaid

Didn't expect this from Greg Ginn's post-Black Flag instrumental trio. Though the raunchy slabs of Ginn's strings-torturing proto-metal (more Blue Cheer and Grand Funk Railroad than Black Sabbath) are familiar to anyone who followed the (fourth and last singer) Henry Rollins-era Black Flag through their post-hardcore days, on LPs such as 1984's Slip It In and 1985's Loose Nut and In My Head, as well as early Gone efforts such as 1986's Gone II. But the industrial, drum-machine dance rhythms are out of left field. It makes for a meaner, more modern, angrier, and less meandering Gone — a malicious monster. But why Ginn doesn't avail himself of a vocalist is a mystery; as ever with Gone, one yearns for that indispensable dimension and never gets it. But if you have the stomach for this heavy guitar marathon in its new pit-bull version, go for it.