This album has broken new ground by changing my writing habits in ways that no other album has. Of course, like B.O.N.N. Apetit! itself, the change is only ephemeral. But never has an album forced me to compromise the standards that I employ with every record review I write. These changes are as follows:

One: My first listen is always with headphones. After hearing the disharmonious guitars, lumpy bass and arrhythmic drums that open the album's first track, "Last-Minute Jane Doe," I instinctively removed the headphones to protect my ears from permanent damage. And good thing I did, for then came the voice of lead singer/bassist Azita (formerly of the Scissor Girls; they rocked, no?). Disregarding any unwritten rules of tune, pitch, or delivery, she sounds like Kim Gordon, but somehow worse. Now, imagine her voice accompanied not by Sonic Youth, but rather by what sounds like a couple of sixth graders who, after buying their first amp, thrash their guitar strings, mouths agape in imitation of Sid Vicious.

Two: I don't write about a genre I know little about. People refer to Bride of No No as no-wave, similar to the Ex or the Fall. While I've heard both of these influential bands, I wouldn't say I'm well-versed. But most reviewers have commented that Bride of No No rock "hard." I guess this fits, if "rocking" simply means playing irritatingly loud. Were I to summarize the band's sound with a quick genre pigeonhole, it would have to be post-"riot grrl" punk. The problem is, this doesn't quite capture the essence of the music, which resembles noise more than it does punk. Let me put it this way: if you love Sonic Youth rip-offs and think L7 "still rocks," then you might be the only person, outside of the band itself, this album was made for.

Three: While some records requires closer listening than others, I always listen to an album multiple times before writing about it. Was it the weak social commentary of lines like, "We have eyeliner wars," or nonsensical lyrics like, "Everybody's talking about Pittsburgh/ Apple juice scrub down on an old char grill?" Was it that Bride of No No took everything wrong with Tweeze-era Slint and magnified it, or that every few minutes they tease me with a few minutes of promising sound, only to return to their "challenging" avant-punk? Had I listened to this tripe again, I most certainly would have lost my ability to assess music for at least a month.

Four: I don't compare an album to another album I've never heard. I have to imagine that parts of this album could be slipped into Sonic Youth's NYC Ghosts and Flowers and no one would notice. Consider the final, 14-minute non-epic, "At the Stranglehold Ballet." During the first five minutes, the band plays their instruments like they do on any other song here-- that is, badly. Then, after a minute of shameless and out-of-place free-jazz, the song descends even further into eight minutes of strict sonic and vocal repetition, with Azita quivering, "Allow me to shit myself a new bird." Loosely calculating, I figure she says this about a hundred times.

Five: I don't ask rhetorical questions. But, really, is there any point in me continuing?

Six: I never end a scathing review with a cheap punchline. I should have taken it as a sign when the Macintosh at work wouldn't play this disc "Error!" it had warned me. "Disc is unreadable." I think 'unlistenable' would have been a more appropriate word.

-Ryan Kearney