Listening to their latest album, "Afternoon Computer Umbrage" I kept thinking that someone should start a fundraiser to buy the guys in Needle Gun some new equipment. All of their instruments sound broken. Then again, they probably like it that way.

It isn't typical critic/PR hyperbole to say that "Afternoon Computer Umbrage" is a free-wheeling, scattershot, psych-noise free-for-all. That's seriously the best and most appropriate description I could muster after having my synapses fried by this electrified trash heap of mind-rotting noise perversions. Okay, now THAT was hyperbole. As one stands in the crossfire generated from Needle Gun's guitar, electronics, drums and vocals melee, they begin to realize the grotesquely punkish beauty being vomited from the amplifier.

Guitars in odd tunings are savagely beaten, producing hemorrhages of jagged riffing. Vocals scrawl out imagery of a man being mangled in the gears of a machine. High-pitched electronic squalls make frequent appearances ("Dirge"), and the band will occasionally find rhythm ("Place Where Spores"), if only for short periods. Side B opener "Crossing" is perhaps the most fully realized track on the album, featuring explosive psychedelic guitar work and pounding rhythm. In contrast to the furious noise spasms is the slow-churning shriek and electro-feedback meditation of "Learn Paralysis."

This is a fun little noise album. Needle Gun hasn't introduced anything new on "Afternoon Computer Umbrage." Quite simply, this is punk rock for the avant-garde crowd. It's nasty, raw, unhinged, and it freaks my cat out. That has to count for something. 6/10 -- Robert Oberlander (7 October, 2009)