Bardo Pond
Bufo Alvarius, Amen 29:15

Even the cover is one you won't forget: the sketch of the face of a disgusting frog-man with a sperm-like tongue (the bufo alvarius is a toad that secretes a hallucinogenic substance).
The sound is beautifully dirty and raw, so undefined and crude that the guitars can venture into the most psychotic cacophonies and the most chilling detunings without detracting from the music's overall sense of harmony. And it's the overall picture that matters, not the individual details: you often find yourself getting lost, submerged by waves of sound of unknown origin, by chords in total discord; the direction is unclear, we are lost in a dark mist. Then the record ends, and we realize we've taken a wonderful journey. Disturbing, challenging, perverse but wonderful.
Sometimes bursts of light appear in the foggy cloak of noise: "On A Side Street" might seem like a Lisa Germano on acid if it weren't for the piercing feedback in the background, and "No Time To Waste" is an almost classic rock'n'roll piece, obviously deformed and highly deviant.
From time to time, it approaches the minimalist psychedelia of the Dadamah; however, Bardo Pond is not as refined, their pieces always remain hallucinatory frenzies: the music is submerged by mountains of noise, oceans of distortion.
And the 29:15 minutes of the final track, "Amen", are a stupor that lasts an eternity. From the most remote depths comes a desperate rumble; boooooom, boooooom, boooooom, no drums, the guitar echoes here and there randomly and enchants for almost half an hour. They could have made it last an hour, triple that, filled ten CDs, and it would have been the same, an extreme hallucination as intense as the greatest kraut highs.

The best album of '95? Some say it's "The Bends".
That is just an ordinary alternative rock album; above average, perhaps, but it has nothing genius, nothing groundbreaking. Bufo Alvarius, on the other hand, cannot leave you indifferent: it is extraordinary, at times intolerable, almost nauseating, imperfect, hypnotic, exaggerated, erotic, rotten inside, decomposing.

Lick the toad's venom too.