Soilent Green

Soylent Green, in the sci-fi flick of the same name, was the government-dispensed food product made out of (surprise!) people. Similarly, the music of New Orleans's Soilent Green could pass for the agonizing crunch of a hundred thousand human corpses being pulped in a mammoth meat grinder. The quintet's fifth and most recent offering, Confrontation, is exactly that: a face-first onslaught of epic conflict and nose-busting riffs butchered by brief, half-joking interludes of jazz, funk and country. The recipe doesn't always work, as the band often winds up feeding on its own chops instead of fattening them up. But when singer Ben Falgoust busts out in his great, growling stomach of a voice, there's no denying the disc's sheer caustic force. As bitter and blistering as Soilent Green's tunes are, though, they're still a hell of a lot more succulent than a heaping helping of mechanically separated long pig. -- Jason Heller