Iceland may be the land of volcanoes, wondrous vistas, and Bjork, but Henrik Bjornsson and his bandmates in Singapore Sling have taken their musical inspirations from horizons as far a field as Dick Dale, the Velvet Underground, and Jesus & Mary Chain. Powered by a triple-guitar assault that easily lives up to its droning, metallic potential, the Sling's ominous sonic assault can just as quickly morph into subtler shades of grey. "Feedback-drenched" does not usually connote a sense of adventurous variety, but that's just the trick Bjornsson and company turn here time and again. Loosing the Lynch/Tarantino-ready opening salvo of "Overdriver," they periodically return to its-'50s-bad-boy-meets-surf-guitar-in-hell on "Listen" and the highway-ready instrumental "Roadkill." Elsewhere they tip their hat to Transformer-era Lou Reed on the sunny "Summer Garden" and turn the Standells' garage classic "Dirty Water" into marauding fuzz-fest. And while their influences may be readily deconstructed, the resulting haze of sonic somnambulism on this promising debut is shrouded in considerably more mystery. --Jerry McCulley

$11.98