This is Unsane's fourth studio album, and while the cover could be mistaken for that of a bad b-grade horror film, Occupational Hazard has more violence and more capacity for fear than any "Scanners" sequel ever produced. This is Unsane: three guys from New York who play blisteringly hard music without fashion or pretense. If you can listen to "Over Me" and not buy this, then you are a better man than I.

Man, this is one brutally heavy album. Filled with skull-busting rhythms, layers of noisy tension, and scathing screams, this album could work very well as the soundtrack to a nervous breakdown. Chris Spencer's guitar sound is among the most unique I've heard in all my years of heavy-music listening, passing up cliched riffing for a thick wall of pummelling, mind-bending distortion. What's more, the band's songwriting is a marvel of tightness and focus with every unnecessary note edited out for maximum efficiency and insanity. Abrasion is mission number one here and Unsane deliver staggering amounts of it on all thirteen of this album's tracks.

Occupational Hazard is heavy stuff. Only buy this album if you want heavy music with violent subject matter. I really dig this album. Does any band make better album covers than Unsane? I highly doubt it.