There’s actually two versions of the Sound of Impact live album. Though the second one—which is the album rereleased a year later—is barely documented anywhere, it seems. The rerelease is the same album except Steve Albini‘s banter is separated into their own tracks, making it 18 tracks instead of the original 15. Also, all the tracks are re-named on the re-release. “Pigeon Kill” is renamed to “Bird Thang” for example. It’s actually pretty fucking annoying, because the rerelease has different running times than the original, so I had to go track-by-track identifying and renaming each one to match the original song name. Fucking Albini.

Anyway, Sound of Impact is a solid live album. I think the strongest moments are the Albini-isms, not the music itself (though they do the studio material justice, they don’t go beyond it). His banter and skits are hilarious. Less hilarious is “Jordan, Minnesota,” where he starts performatively screaming as if he were the child being assaulted in the song’s lyrics. It’s honestly pretty fucked up, but you either take the bad with the good when it comes to Big Black or go somewhere else, because the band certainly doesn’t care. Let that serve as a content warning, I suppose. Last note, the live version of “Cables,” which features on some versions of Atomizer as a bonus track, originates from this live album.