**1/2 The Monorchid

WHO PUT OUT THE FIRE?

(Touch & Go)

When the Monorchid broke up late last year, they left behind 25 minutes' worth of raw, explosive demos that are now their final album. Fronted by singer Chris Thomson and guitarist Chris Hamley (both alumni of Circus Lupus), this DC band focused on multi-instrumental tension. The guitar parts of Hamley and Andy Cone tear at each other like fighting cats; the rhythm section is as tightly wound as the Gang of Four's (a clear influence), with the bass cutting out again and again to make a more solid impact when it re-enters the mix. And Thomson's howls are full of loathing and disgust.

None of the songs here outstays its welcome, but they're almost all variations on the same kind of taut, atonal bounce (though "Skin Problems" substitutes loops of taped voices for Thomson). The final track, "Abyss," has a kind of internal melodic logic that the rest lack; it turns out to be a cover of a song by Sort Sol. The Monorchid's strength, though, wasn't coherence in melody (or lyrics, though some of Thomson's sound great out loud: "Sheared too close to the bloom . . . too much static," he yelps), it was pouncing and abrading. Who Put Out the Fire? is a pleasantly sandpapery swan song.

-- Douglas Wolk