Thoughts of Ionesco (yes, like Eugene Ionesco) came from the basements of Detroit and lasted from 1996 to 1999. Weaned on doses of The Stooges, My War-era Black Flag, Swans, experimental jazz, and Mahavishnu Orchestra, TOI shared bills with the leading metal/noise/hardcore bands popping up in the mid-’90s but fell apart before the underground caught on. Of course it didn’t help that the band was confrontational with most other bands, their labels and, perhaps most of all, their audience. Severe mental illness and substance abuse crippled the band in the end, but they were hard workers and prolific songwriters (they put out four records which each took little more than a day—but no more than three—to record) and it showed. TOI channeled their emotional discord with songwriting that was both technical in structure and unflinchingly straightforward in its aggression.

“Figure” is a song from A Skin Historic, according to frontman Sean Hoen, a turning point for the band. Drummer Brian Repa had left the band after what I suppose can be called a breakdown and replaced him with former Suicide Machines/future Alkaline Trio drummer Derek Grant. A trained musician, the band saw this as an opportunity to expand into more free jazz territory. Though it’s confined within a skeleton of no nonsense thrash riffs, “Figure” melts down into illogical disorder with just as much brutality before bringing it back in to a searing, devastating conclusion.

The band followed with their last record, For Detroit, From Addiction, which is marked by Repa’s return. A less complicated drummer, Repa serves as a formidable backbone for what Hoen described in the Watermark liner notes as their rock record. “Learning an Enemy,” the opener, is a murderous slice of stoner rock dipped in amphetamines. Hoen’s vocals transform from a guttural bellow to the most bare-boned, unrestrained screams a band of such magnitude could possibly muster. The entire record is riddled with the scars of depression and wariness from a band beaten down by its own antisocial antics.

The band broke up, as most bands probably should, unceremoniously. The members slipped into even more obscurity trying to do everything they avoided while in the band: stuff like, you know, 9-5 jobs. The band’s musical chops have not been squandered, however. Hoen and bassist Nathan Miller now helm the surprisingly poppy, but by no means light, the Holy Fire and Repa too went indie with Paradise.

[buy stuff here]