In their own ever-pugnacious way, Shellac mellowed on their second album, 1998’s Terraform. Yes, Steve Albini’s lyrics still looked to lampoon or lambast the world, whether he was calling supposed friends bad names, or railing against ventriloquism, blockheads and dummies. Taking up a third of the album, the opener was a 12-minute march of bass and drums, with Albini brooding over a band that sometimes almost went quiet. Other songs were often short and slightly less punchy, as though the vicious power trio was trying not to go too far. Was Shellac checking itself? Not at all: Released two years later, 1000 Hurts is one of the leanest, most aggressive and most efficient records in indie-rock history, full of transgressive invectives and lamentations, all of it spewed over a band that moved with the agility of some newly oiled and weaponized machine. Todd Trainer, Bob Weston and Albini move like pistons, all precise and purposeful. The band’s hyperbolic and meticulous rage is also funny, as the opening tandem makes clear. “Prayer to God” is a plea for divine retribution against a former lover and her new man, with violence so extreme it makes him “cry like a woman, no particular woman.” The absurdity becomes clear with “Squirrel Song”, about an off-gridder who drafts squirrels to generate his electricity, only to be let down when they litter his quarters or hibernate all winter. “This isn’t some kind of metaphor,” Albini shouts in comic summary. “God damn, this is real.” The ire doesn’t end. The lunging “New Number Order” takes issue with the way we count, the patient “Song Against Itself” criticises the way we struggle to reconcile all the voices in our head, and the belligerent “Watch Song” rails against, well, watches? Then there’s “Canaveral”, which is stammered from the agitated perspective of someone whose wife was seduced by John F. Kennedy. It’s a rhythmically tricky post-hardcore hypothetical with a stinging punchline: The narrator wants to start a tropical country, with Lee Harvey Oswald proudly portrayed on every stamp. In Shellac’s finest half-hour ever, that is the key—to sound and seem only malevolent, winking all the while.