Fleshpress - Tearing Skyholes

Finland's Fleshpress may take their name from a Grief song, but it's clear from the opening moments of 'Washer', the first track of their 8th release Tearing Skyholes, that this is a mere vestigial influence by this point.

During the opening minutes of this track they're more akin to mid-to-late period Earth, replete with bright, clean tones and glacial pace, but things soon take a turn for the harsher with an abrasive noise-rock rhythm and the addition of vocalist Marko's repellant bark.

The absolutely monumental closing track 'Each Eye Holes The Sky' begins with layers of corrosive guitar and pounding drums, increasingly building the tension of the track to the point where it becomes almost unbearable, the layers of guitar interweaving and overlapping before the track finally coalesces into a recognisable rhythm. Revolting, orc-like grunted vocals babble maliciously just beneath the surface, while the band seemingly abandon the momentum they spent so long building in favour of short guitar breaks with an almost western vibe.

This is another perfect example of what Fleshpress do so well on Tearing Skyholes; they establish a solid rhythmic base which they then use to veer off on wild exploratory tangents, without ever becoming convoluted or boring. Yes, there's a fair bit of fretboard fuckery, but never at the expense of interesting riffs. The track deteriorates further with each repetition until the riff is so distended and warped that it's barely recognisable from the track's beginnings, before dissipating into corrosive feedback, the equivalent of the slow death of rusting machinery.

Read my full review of this release over at Echoes And Dust...

Fleshpress on Facebook | Bandcamp

Meth Drinker / Moloch split LP

Alongside Denmark's Bottom Feeder, Italy's Grime, Massachusetts' Plague Survivors, the UK's own Moloch and New Zealand's Meth Drinker, the term sludge is being reclaimed by a clutch of young bands to epitomise hateful howls, squalling feedback and corrosive distortion at torturous tempo, as opposed to it being applied to any vaguely slow heavy music, or seemingly automatically applied to any band from Georgia.

This is a development I welcome wholeheartedly, and I'm glad to see two of the finest exponents of The New Wave of Worldwide Sludge Metal sharing a split. I've had the great misfortune to witness both of these bands live shows, and left both sets feeling like I'd been held down and had rusted nails slowly forced into my aural cavities. I should probably mention I regard that as a good thing.

Available through Feast Of Tentacles here:
http://feastoftentacles.bigcartel.com/product/moloch-meth-drinker-split-lp-preorder

Read my full review at The Sleeping Shaman...

Plague Survivors - compilation tape

Part of the reason I started writing about the music I love was in the hope people would read it, and recommend me more bands I'd be into. Though I've been doing it for a while now, only a few people have sent me stuff, but nothing that's had quite the impact of Massachusetts' Plague Survivors.

Andrew at Dry Cough Records sent me this tape after having read my review of his next release, On Pain Of Death's Year Naught Doom. If he keeps putting out releases of this calibre, Dry Cough will be one of the labels to watch in the coming months.

Opening track 'Grim Note' is all thick fuzz and torturous feedback, with occasional lapses into something like a song. I'm so glad people get what I dig about bands like this; the filthy, sour tones, the contempt in the vocals, the sort of lurching rhythm that's perfect to spill beer to... As the last sounds die out, I'm immediately sold on this band.

'Foul Voice' begins with a lumbering, crashing stomp, and with a scream the tempo is ramped up to a chugging rhythm the meanest hardcore band could only dream of. The speed picks up again before the track collapses back to the start, the whole nasty cycle repeated before it comes crashing to a halt.

A distorted, warbled voice sounds like the sort of sample heard at the start of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, before the building feedback erupts into the agonising crawl of 'Low Places'. You couldn't even describe this is a song so much as it sounds like the death throes of a depressive set to woozy, swaying bursts of distortion, following the tradition of Grief's 'Lifeless'. About halfway through the thickening feedback and agonised vocals coalesce into a rabid, raving beast of a track.

'Funeral Pyre' closes out side A with the eerie atonal tolling of guitar strings being played with a rusty hacksaw. Dirty drones and the scrape of fingernails on a casket lid build and build, the tension unbearable, the suffocating sensation seems neverending... Until the whole thing burns itself out in the dying howls of distortion.

Disgusting. Perfect.

Side B opens with 'Witch Crusher', a mangled, angular nightmare, with vocalist Matthew Willwerth spewing furious bile over the whole mess. Halfway through there's a truly fucking weird midsection, discordant plinking on piano, backwards-masked invocations and creepy crawling bass. The rest of the track that follows decays further and further away to nothing.

'Ditch Digger' slithers from the speakers, vague whispers like snakes, before the hissing gives way to a sound not unlike the equivalent of having your head slammed against the floor. The bludgeoning subsides, replaced by a Dystopian crawl towards the merciful end.

The tape closes out with a pretty faithful cover of Sabbath's 'Electric Funeral', the usual vocal style abandoned in favour of a more traditional singing style that reminds me of the departure of Olly's vocals on the latest Moss record. You already know what this song sounds like, and if you don't then you've no business reading this blog.

Apparently they have more Sabbath covers recorded, and I really can't wait to hear them, as well as the next release of their own material that they put out.

If you like your sludge on the creepy, hateful side (the way it fucking should be), get into Plague Survivors.

You can pick this tape up from Dry Cough Records here:
http://drycoughrecords.bigcartel.com/

And download the various releases that make up this compilation here:
http://plaguesurvivors.bandcamp.com/

Meth Drinker - S/T LP

As I prepare to head out on another trip to the riff-filled land, Heavy Days In Doom Town in Copenhagen, I thought I'd give some lip-service to one of the bands I'm looking forward to seeing the most in the next week;

METH DRINKER.

A friend from that side of the planet (Meth Drinker hail from New Zealand) sent me the video for their track 'Combat Shock' and I was immediately on board.

Opening with a sample from the movie of the same name, when the music kicks in you'd swear you'd unearthed a lost classic from the nascent birth of sludge, that you'd just prised out a dusty mixtape from some scumbag's boombox that'd lain unused since 1993. The track ends with some warped, warbling, evil sounding Casio.

I fucking love when people know me well enough to send me shit like this.

Shortly after playing this track over and over on repeat, it was announced they'd be the support on Graves At Sea's first European tour and that they'd also be playing Doom Town, the fest I was spending my very last money to get to. Fuck yeah.

It wasn't 'til now that I managed to snare myself a copy of their full-length record, it's goddamn hard to track down since it's an edition of only 300. After seeing the words SOLD OUT on absolutely every distro I could find, I managed to snag the last copy from Mordgrimm.

Side A opens with 'Deprivation', all ominous fuzz and sampled screams. When everything comes together it sounds like New Zealand's answer to Noothgrush. It's impossible not to play Guess The Influence with this record, though the band themselves are open about their more blatant inspiration.

'Incurable Illness' begins with the pounding of drums, before Meth Drinker achieve what so few bands manage, and actually create a tune from the atonal. They wield feedback as a weapon, the discordance creating real discomfort, as opposed to all those Southern Lordcore bands who just throw it on top to disguise their lack of riffs and to make themselves sound like more than the hardcore bros with HM2s that they are.

Towards the end of the track the guitar cuts out long enough to let the bass prowl/growl menacingly.

'Ganja Mutt' is a mangy beast of a track, staggering on it's last legs, hoarsely barking it's last. About halfway through the guitar takes on a Dystopian tone before it drones into 'Combat Shock'.

Flip the side and you'll be confronted with the Iron Monkey-esque assault of 'Skull Smashing Concrete'. It's fucking good. In-depth reviewing skills, huh?

Next up they screech out a take of 'Dies Irae', the opening music from Stanley Kubrick's The Shining. Considering it's one of my favourite movies of all time, I am very fucking into this. The Melvins also did a cover of this on their 'Nude With Boots' album.

More droning, eerie versions of horror movie soundtracks please.

'Serrated Corridor' sounds just as rusty and jagged as its title, a few minutes of agonising creepy crawl. There is probably a deep-seated psychological reason I enjoy putting myself through this filth, but I'll happily remain untreated if it means I get to torture my eardrums with the Dystopia-worshipping second half of the track.

'Broken Down & Used Up' is how you're gonna feel by the time you reach this final track. I dread to think how I'll feel after seeing this band live in a few days. Probably being covered in filth and full of substances would be appropriate.

If you're at Doom Town and you see the guy with the death-doom denim who's barely clinging on to his sanity, buy him a beer because he'll be broke and broken.

You can check out their discography here:
http://methdrinker.bandcamp.com/

And you can keep up with their tour dates and shit here:
http://alwaysneverfunrecords.wordpress.com/

DRINK METH.

13 / Grief split 7"

13 are one of those bands that SERIOUSLY deserve the reissue compilation treatment, or at least to be more recognised and appreciated among those who like it low and slow.
That gets said by just about anyone who writes about them these days, so if everyone is calling out for it, why the fuck hasn't it happened yet? Baffling.

The way most people who weren't there first time around (I would have been about 5 when this was released!) hear about this band is probably through their guitarist, one Liz Buckingham.
After 13 disbanded, Liz did a stint in sludge bruisers Sourvein, before joining the second incarnation of Electric Wizard after their original rhythm section left to form Ramesses.
ANYWAY, that's how I first became aware of 13, and how I came to own this excellent little slab of sludge.

I'm pretty sure this is one of the original pressings from '93, it has GRIEF-003 etched into the vinyl's center, which makes me think it's the version released by Grievance Records, but if anyone could let me know for sure, I'd appreciate it!

Since 13 are the band that I'm rather obviously ranting about, their side is up first.
'Wither' opens their side with dry, rasping feedback, before a drumfill that sounds like 45 on 33 starts the song with a very literal bang. Alicia Morgan's voice was trailblazing, there really weren't many female sludge vocalists around back then. You can barely tell her guttural, feral growl is even human, never mind determine the gender.
It's backed by a simple but effective riff which is slightly uptempo for the genre, this is more groovey than painful. Just over a minute in and it mutates into a straight-ahead chug, the drums taking a back seat to the air-pushing power of the riff.
Three minutes in things change pace again to an even more relaxed groove, variations on a theme. Listening to this and knowing the type of stuff Liz would go on to write over a decade later, you can really hear just how much influence she's had on Electric Wizard since she started playing with them. This style of playing is unmistakably her own.
The track comes to a halt with a final snare hit, and fade to fuzzed out bliss.

'Plague' starts as a bass rumble, barely audible before the driving guitar plays for a couple bars, then things really kick off with all instruments really locking in together. Alicia's ruined throat tops the whole thing off, her vocal lines following the rest of the band perfectly.
A lot of sludge, especially these days, is too loose, unconsidered, with barely any thought given to making something you can almost dance to. Which may sound like I'm missing the point of the genre, that it's meant to be taken as needed for pain exclusively. But I like songs with my sludge, something you can bang your head to more than once a minute. Personal preference, I guess, and 13 play EXACTLY the brand of roaring, buzzing aural bleach with swing and swagger that I favour.

I'm basically just rambling about how much I dig this band instead of actually 'reviewing' the record, but to hell with it, just go download it, stream it somewhere, or if you can find a copy, buy it. Hopefully if enough people express interest in them, someone will actually release that compilation I mentioned earlier. 13 deserve it.

Grief's side features only one track, 'Falling Apart', and they perfectly exemplify the insufferably-slow side of the genre. Not that I mean that as a bad thing, I love it just as much for different reasons. When I've had the worst of days, Grief play the songs that accompany those days in my head. The crawling, painful sounds giving voice to wasted hours and thoughts I wish I didn't have.

I don't have much to say about this side as I was into this record for 13's tracks. Oh, did I mention that already?

Since their releases are nigh on impossible to track down in physical formats, go grab downloads from this great, comprehensive discography write-up
http://icoulddietomorrow.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/13-discography.html

Dystopia - S/T LP

As much as I wish all the bands I listened to were first heard on warped old tape-traded cassettes, it simply isn't the case. I have no friends into anything resembling the same music as myself, no-one ever told me to check out a band, no other person is responsible for my shitty taste in unlistenable noise. Every band I've ever had an interest in, bought a record, tape or CD by, I've hunted down for myself. I've never tried to impress anyone with what I listen to because there isn't a soul for 100 miles around worth impressing. New discoveries are primarily made through the endless sites like this one, isolated, lonely weirdos screaming out into the digital void, trying to get across what certain music means to them. It's through hours trawling these collections of 1s and 0s looking for someone who hears music the same way that I kept seeing this name popping up. Dystopia.

They are described by endless copied and pasted biographies as 'a sludge band from CA, USA. The band formed in Orange County, California in 1991, and were popular in both the heavy metal and crust punk scenes, due in large part to their bleak misanthropic imagery. Their lyrics often dealt with human emotion and sociopolitical issues such as environmentalism, racial equality, animal rights, and veganism.
Dystopia is a soundtrack for the world as we know it today. Their sound embodies all of the horrors, pain, agony and desperation of modern day society.'
I remember reading that and thinking holy fuck, how could I NOT like this band?!
I mean, I'm all for not killing the planet, the abolition of every -ism from sex to race, but the vegan part, not so much. I try to be a good person in as many ways as I can, but it's not my fault animals are so goddamn delicious.

So with the indirect recommendations of endless internet nerds, I set about tracking down some of their releases. This self-titled album was their swansong, released in '08 shortly before they disbanded.

I just want to comment on how refreshing it is to see something different in terms of artwork. I am so fucking sick of every single goddamn crust/sludge/powerviolence/whatever record using that long-redundant cut/pasted flyer, photocopy, scratch-y logo aesthetic. It's the 21st century, who even uses photocopiers anymore?!
So to look upon this sleeve with it's weird hand-drawn '90s graff-style fonts and detailed full-colour collages is a sight for sore (and bored) eyes. Though all the usual thematic staples are present; tyrants/leaders, disaffected dissidents, nuclear armaments, landscapes of destruction, mental patients, capitalist symbols, it's nice to see them shown in a more interesting manner. That said, I'm gonna get down to the music now...

The album opens with the buzz of warm amps and feedback, and an extended sample of various Eckhart Tolle philosophies, on everything from fear, politics, materialism, to the sense of self. I'm not overly familiar with Tolle, but a few things heard in this overlapped rambling fragments ring true. I'll investigate further, my curiosity is sufficiently piqued. The background drones on forebodingly, backing the sample for a couple of minutes before anything resembling an actual riff enters the picture. The riff has a Sleep-y tone, warm and enveloping.
'Unease, anxiety, tension, stress, worry...' are easily discerned from the sampled self-help, and those are feelings that become all too familiar throughout the listening of this record.

Just over 3 minutes into the first track, the pace picks up, the riff digging into a creepy crawly little groove. Reading along with the lyrics, it seems that they used the samples as the basis for debate, questioning Tolle's ideas of rejecting past and future, living in the now; "if past and future don't exist, where the fuck does that leave us? [...] I hang my head in sorrow because the now is too disgusting to see".
It's an interesting approach, most sludge bands just use samples because it's a trademark of the genre, and it's the 'cool' thing to do, to sample the most obscure and shocking horror movie / police report. I prefer the sample to actually mean something relevent to the song.

The second track 'Control All Delete' jumps straight into the song, no buildup or sample. The tempo ain't exactly breakneck by any stretch of the imagination, but seeing as Dystopia are loved by both sludge obsessives and crusties alike, it sits comfortably between these two paces. The vomitous dual vocal attack keeps things interesting, switching between voices as the song changes gear, developing a groove, a swing. Things switch between these two tones and tempos until the track careens to an abrupt end.

'Leaning With Intent To Fall' is another sample-led song, it's first couple of minutes taken up with the warped logic of a junkie. I have a deep loathing of anyone weak enough to fall prey to heroin, so listening to this, presumably real, interview take place really boils my blood. A couple of sentences in the most filthy, atonal guitar abuse starts up in the background. It's not a riff, it's not feedback, it's a hacking, violent thing. It's the sound of a pickaxe for a plectrum and rusted wire for strings. Improvised drums are an accompanying assault.
This death rattle music is like the free jazz to the beat poetry of empty justifications.

The defeated words of the substance abuser give way to an eruption of the RIFF! This is one of those moments where it doesn't matter what you're doing, you NEED to bang your head or do SOMETHING immediately. Lamentations on those lost to the filth people put in their veins, and the difficulty in living with the choices that other people make comprise the lyrical content. It's a weird juxtaposition, considering it's such a musically enjoyable song, that riff just DARING you not to move yourself.

The next track is just a sample with eerie ambient backing. More audio collage, overlapping samples all vying for your attention, each barely discernable among the throng of mad rantings and ravings.
The passages I can make out seem to be an interview with a mentally ill meth/coke/speed-fuelled woman, spewing forth her broken life story, conspiracies plotted against her, the paranoia and giddy glee with which she recounts her harrowing lowest points, leaving you terrified that those deemed 'cured' and 'fit for society' by whatever body thinks itself worthy of passing such judgement, are really very fucking far from it. These people are out there, walking the same streets as you.

Side B opens with 'Illusion Of Love', a song originally written by drummer Dino's old band Carcinogen, recorded for posterity here. It's opening riff is more traditionally crusty, buzzing to life for a coupla bars before manic grinding drums crash in behind it. The vocals are delivered in a throat-shredding acid-gargling yell. The speed section shifts down MANY gears to an ascending riff, sounding more menacing with each move up the fretboard.
Dundun-duhduh-NahNah-NARGH-NARGH!
The tempo increases, the sound of a drunk and belligerent behemoth staggering and mutter-growling to itself. Weird, the mental images you get from something as simple as 4 notes and some distortion, huh?
The giant lumbers until the song's grind finale. See what i did there, eh? Eh? My shitty wordplay humour is wasted on the internet...

Penultimate song 'Number One Hypocrite' is probably the most straight-ahead undiluted sludge track here, nailing all the genre staples in a succinct 3 minutes. There ain't much else I want to say about this track. I'm starting to get pretty burnt out on typing all this shit. It's a good song, there, done.

'My Meds Aren't Working'. Fucking hell. What a way to end an album. It's a slow-burner, even by sludge standards. Well, at least for a couple of minutes until one of the most corrosive, downright nasty sounding songs ever comes spewing out of my speakers. I'm surprised the air doesn't start to blacken and reek as the notes fill it. If that makes it sound like a bad song, it ain't. It still 'rocks', though that is a terrible term. This disgusting mess actually grooves.

Actually, I'll use that last sentence as the summation of the whole damn album.

You can still pick this up from a few places. I got my copy from the always excellent punkdistro.de
Take a look at the rest of their selection while you're browsing, it veers mostly towards the crustier end of the spectrum. A tonne of great stuff available from that distro.