Air Above Your Station / C'est Mortel (2003)

Two bands for folks who crave heavy-metal crunch but have no interest in hearing Ozzy bray to Mother Earth. Seattle's Kinski still seem bummed that '90s desert-rat space-rockers Kyuss broke up; their fuzzed-out organ drones and grinding sludge-boogie guitar is trance music as imagined by Harley-Davidson engineers. Athens, Ga.'s C'est Mortel churn out two 30-minute-plus instrumental prog epics whose bull-and-china-shop guitar productions sound like King Crimson knighting (and occasionally beheading) Slint. DON'T STOP Kinski's ''Schedule for Using Pillows and Beanbags'' features the harshest coitus interruptus in recent rock memory. Kinski: B+ C'est Mortel: B