Metallic Diseases is the most intense blast of guitar squalling heat to never find its proper audience when originally released 20 years ago. Truly unhinged at times ("Cans"), sublimely dreamlike and understated at others ("Shake Off"), Starfuckers's debut album fuses the best lineage of droning, hard rocking sounds ("USA" makes a perfect amalgam of Suicide's "Rocket USA" and the Stooges' "1969"), with a gestalt that pushes it over the cliff, as "Western Man" is the kind of prophetic call to arms that Spacemen 3 tried to communicate through "Revolution" (itself a rewrite of "Black To Comm").

The few who heard this LP when it was released flipped out, as it deserved to be lauded along with more immediate precursors like Union Carbide Productions and Les Thugs, that rare blend of punk/noise/psych/groove that they just never made enough of to go around. Indeed, the LP was almost impossible to find Stateside at the time, leaving the few die hards looking for a copy to put it on want lists in MRR. Now, Holy Mountain has made it easy for us, as we can simply step up to the altar and take a sip of this precious fluid while it is in season - one more time.