Last year, I did an On the Radar profile of riffy UK noise trio Volume Death Riot, which if you’re interested, you can find here. If you don’t feel like clicking over, the gist of it was that they’re heavy and mean and worth checking out. In fact, they’re about two more songs’ worth checking out now that new cuts “Chaos Gypsy” and “Jesus Devil” have been posted on their MySpace page.

First-name-only guitarist/vocalist Joe checked in with this update about the tracks:

Volume Death Riot returned to long time recording friend Carlos Santana at Zoo Studios to record two more tracks, “Jesus Devil” and “Chaos Gypsy” for the new EP, Religion is the Opium for the Masses.

“Chaos Gypsy,” being the sludgy of the two Melvins/Sabbath style, has a cool groove to it. Man, love playing that tune wrote about having a shit job and no money sums things up pretty much.

“Jesus Devil” is the more melodic of the two. There’s a nod to Alice in Chains in this one. They were a massive influence on us. Had loads of different versions of this track we decided on this for the final mix and when we listened to it thought damn that sounds completely different to how it should, but kickass, so we were pretty stoked.

These two tracks sound different to our first recordings, “Buer” and “Hell to Pay,” as we spent more time mixing “Chaos Gypsy” and “Jesus Devil,” due to using different amps and messing around with distortion/tones. Overall result sounds pretty brutal and we were stoked with the finished product.

One more time, here’s Volume Death Riot on MySpace

I’m talking about unchecked aggression, dude. That’s what Midlands trio Volume Death Riot have to say about it. Theirs is a therapeutic, noisy kind of riff metal, like AmRep gone mo-dern; a little mellower than Unsane at their angriest, but aren’t we all? You might hear some Houdini, but you might not. One’s as likely as the other.

I’ve been grooving on the two tracks on Volume Death Riot‘s MySpace page for the last week or so, and the energy they emit is every bit as frantic and unchained as the paragraph above. Everything about them is choppy except the songwriting. “Buer,” at a surprisingly quick seven minutes, is riffy without being cliche, and the kind of song you’d expect to be instrumental, but for the vocals. “Hell to Pay” is shorter, crunchier and more aggressive vocally, but still basically in the noise-rock mold. Of the two I’ll take the latter, as far as personal preference goes, and though I don’t know what the three-piece’s plans are as far as more recording, I’d sure like to see them play a gig with On the Radar veterans Dopefight.

Noise is about as unpretentious a sound as you can get, and Volume Death Riot definitely make good use of that workingman feel in their two present tracks. Hopefully they’ll be able to keep that kind of atmosphere going forward, as both “Hell to Pay” and “Buer” have a sincerity to their anger that’s not easily faked. They’re not changing the world, but they’ve got a cool sound, decent production, and potential. It’s worth keeping an eye on the MySpace to see where they go from here.