Koksofen

On the fourth album by his power trio Massaker, guitarist Caspar Brötzmann had developed his own and his band’s style of live-in-the-studio rock improvisation into something almost telepathic and extraordinarily powerful. The songs retained the slow build and postpunk clang of earlier work but built to astonishing heights. The opening “Hymne” rises up like mist off the ground, drummer Danny Arnold Lommen’s cymbals building tension as Brötzmann and bassist Eduardo Delgado Lopez rumble and snarl; when a beat and a riff finally arrive, almost four minutes into a nearly 15-minute piece, they’re thrilling, but gone again too soon. The mood simmers for another four minutes, until the music finally explodes in the track’s second half, black storm clouds of guitar hovering as bass and drum thunder cracks over and over.