Painkiller were almost daring audiences to dislike them right from the beginning.

Emerging in 1991, they brought together three very different, though equally extreme, musical personalities: saxophonist Zorn had been probing the limits of song form and sonics with his provocative Naked City project; drummer Mick Harris was a refugee from Midlands grindcore pioneers Napalm Death; while Laswell had recently made the leap from producer to bassist with the roaring free-rock excesses of Last Exit with Peter Brötzmann. Their first couple of albums were predictably savage affairs, but with 1994's Execution Ground – now reissued on vinyl for the first time – they struck out for strange new territory. Side A bursts like a messy boil, unleashing furious gouts of pounding blast-beat drums, angry altissimo skronk and growling sub-bass: an ugly hybrid of thrash metal and free jazz that's every bit as brutal as you'd expect. But then something strange happens. The ferocity subsides, leaving us stranded – lonely and drifting – in ambient space, as though all the previous energy had been needed to achieve escape velocity and break past the earth's atmosphere. Bearings found, a dub bassline creeps in and the journey proper begins: a slow and purposeful cruise with the occasional shriek of queasily modulated sax racing by like comet trails outside the window. Side B picks up in similar territory, with odd effects and heavy production building an otherworldly vibe that builds to an inevitable energy. The second disc here pushes even further away from the source, with sparse, web-like ambient mixes that leave the listener floundering for some kind of foothold. It was – and still is – very far out indeed.