Richard Pinhas is back, folks (well, he never actually went away, but more on that in a moment), and if this double-disc set is any indication, he's currently exhaling the fiercest sonic fire of his more than three-decades long career. See, for those of you caught unawares of various prog/electronic modes signified throughout the latter third of the 20th century, Monsieur Pinhas founded and stormed the world with his post-King Crimson brigade Heldon, unleashing upon the firmament some of the most archetypal and truly progressive experimental rock and electronic music ever wrought. One of France's finest exports, Pinhas has led something of a "dual" career as well; the recordings credited solely to him worked a mojo equal parts Crimson gusto, early Schulzian Moog madness and Frippertronic vivacity. (Fripp's his idol.) That being understood, regardless of his influences, Pinhas is indeed his own man/artist, a wildly unique guitarist and 'tronix manipulator, a cyberpunk before there were cyberpunks, who doggedly pursues his own neurotechno vision regardless of prevailing trends, idioms, dogma, etc.

But experiencing Metal/Crystal undeniably shows Pinhas has been imbibing much of the current noise scene, inasmuch as he's chosen two of its staunchest icons — Merzbow and Wolf Eyes — to assist him in the demonic purges that seek expurgation across these epic-length pieces. Pinhas credits his collaborators in the liner notes, noting their help "during these two worst years of my life." Indeed, they must have been difficult ones at that, as track titles such as "Bi-polarity", "Paranoia", "Depression", and "Schizophrenia" attest, suggesting disheveled, unresolved mindstates and psychological cul-de-sacs that apparently Pinhas found himself locked into during the aforementioned period. The result is easily the most challenging, controversial, and atypical work to be found in either the Heldon or Pinhas catalog, a soul-scraping confluence of sounds that finds the artist masticating electricity and putting his machines through all kinds of brutal hell.

Little here is recognizable as classic Pinhas material, although the three pieces on disc one find old collaborators Didier Batard and Antoine Paganotti doing their best to resurrect the crusty prog spirit of classic Heldon. But this is electronic music of a truly experimental nature: free-form, exploratory, improvisational and incantatory all at once. Disc two's "Hysteria" finds Wolf Eyes storming the all over Pinhas's studio in abject sonic terror: never before has the molecular structure of his electronic tableaux been so utterly atomized. At least on "Schizophrenia" one recognizes Pinhas's trademark pulsating Moogs and ARPs (and even some errant Red looping), though they're easily covered in purple Merzbowian fuzz and god knows whatever other aural detritus. The inner demons Pinhas has sought to exorcise here are ultimately vanquished with a brutish finality — Metal/Crystal is a schizophrenic work, in your face, extreme, cacophonous, yet morbidly fascinating and tough to shake off.