Twenty-six years in, The Dead C still sounded like no one else – or, perhaps more correctly, no one else has quite the chutzpah to attempt to sound like The Dead C. This is at least in part due to The Dead C’s sound being so embedded in the specifics of their kit and their playing – Bruce Russell’s Concord Contessa amplifier; Michael Morley’s murky guitar tone; Robbie Yeats’s drums, that shift in and out of time, making loose with rhythm. Armed Courage consists of two twenty-something minute improvisations that the trio ghost out of the air; “Armed” is simmering fury, a continual molten outpouring that’s as lacerating as it is cossetting; “Courage” is looser, emptier, Morley’s narcotic voice disintegrating into the deep, guttural rumble at the heart of The Dead C’s music.

– Jon Dale