Noothgrush / Coffins split LP

This review originally appeared on Echoes And Dust.

When I caught both Noothgrush and Coffins at the inaugural Heavy Days In Doom Town fest in Copenhagen last year, I almost couldn't believe what I was witnessing. Given that Oakland's Noothgrush had been split up for more than a decade, and that Tokyo's Coffins were from, well, Tokyo, I felt especially lucky just to have gotten the chance to see each of them. I never thought it would happen. That both bands completely decimated the crowd with their respective sets was tantamount to their sheer crushing weight; the power of the riff is constrained by neither time nor distance.

When I got talking to Noothgrush guitarist Russ Kent a few days later before their show in Hamburg, he mentioned that Uchino from Coffins had suggested the idea of both bands embarking on a Japanese tour together.

That was 18 months ago, and only now are both that tour and the resultant split record happening. I guess taking things agonisingly slow isn't something that only applies to their music.

Noothgrush don't fuck around on their side, their first track 'Humandemic' immediately capturing the sound of Sabbath's Paranoid record, with Russ' SG-through-a-Laney tone complimenting Chiyo Nukaga's trademark gigantic cymbal crashes perfectly. So well do they emulate the doomed vibe of their musical forefathers, that when Dino Sommese (you know, of Dystopia, Asunder, Ghoul, every other fucking band) spews his bile-scorched vocals over everything, it almost seems like a shame to pollute the pure '70s atmosphere. That is until you remember that this is the return of Noothgrush, one of the most disgusting, and disgusted, sludge bands to have been dragged into existence in the '90s. They were just as angry about the era they were living in then, and Dino's hateful howl reminds you that rage has not dimmed one iota; this is miserable music for miserable times.

Their second contribution to the record is a re-recording of their classic track 'Jundland Wastes', which has been floating around in various recorded forms ever since their 1995 Kashyyyk demo. The quality of this recording, even the clarity of the sample playing throughout the intro, is sure to cement this as the definitive version. The mid-track lull allows Gary Niederhoff's malevolently crawling bass to detach from the main riff for a couple of bars, before everything coalesces again and the band drag themselves through the eponymous wastes towards the end of the track. Never mind Tusken Raiders; Noothgrush are the scariest thing to ever inhabit the deserts of Tattooine.

They close out their side with the 9-minute 'Thoth', a tribute to beloved Bay Area DJ Cy Thoth, who passed away this year. Beginning with looped samples of Thoth himself before Chiyo's drums herald the arrival of a monstrous riff, it's classic Noothgrush, even down to Russ' full-fretboard pickscrapes.

The track meanders madly, with further samples of Cy Thoth thrown in throughout, Dino's absolutely ferocious vocals providing sharp contrast to his spoken word psychedelic ramblings.

When the track, and Noothgrush's side, ends with a recording of a laughing Thoth warning everyone to "watch out for cannibal attacks! Everyone is suspect!", it's clear even to those unaware of his work that he was a true original who will be much missed by his community. Thankfully, the heavy music community can welcome one of it's own true originals back to the fold.

It's good to have you back, Noothgrush.

I'll admit it, compared to new Noothgrush material, anything else was going to pale in comparison, but thankfully they share this split with one of my favourite bands of recent years. Given that Coffins have actually covered Noothgrush in the past, on their excellent tribute EP Sewage Sludgecore Treatment, they know exactly how much grime they need to apply to their already putrid death-doom. The first track of their side, 'Drown In Revelation', is able to match the other side for both filth and fury.

Slowly fading in, the ominous approach of the drums soon joined by prowling bass, while the feedback builds and builds, until with an "UGH!" they launch into one of those deadly riffs that Uchino seems to have an endless supply of in his arsenal. Given that this is something like their eighth release in just the last couple of years, they manage to maintain a ridiculously high quality level with all their recordings, with their recent full-length The Fleshland already being one of my favourite releases this year. Around two-thirds of the way through the track, the band kick things up a gear into full-on death-doom mode, the lurching, stuttering riff backed up with punishing double-kick drums, before slowing everything down to a doomed crawl. When they return to that monstrous main riff again, if you're not in full-on headbanging-and-invisible-oranges mode, there's something wrong with you.

'The Wretched Path' continues in that same vile vein, with the influence of Celtic Frost clearly heard in the faster passages of this track. I never though I'd say this, but this track near enough fucking bounces along at points, it's so uptempo. However, don't mistake that for upbeat, I'm sure that whatever Uchino is growling here, the words themselves are foul enough to offset any remotely 'good time' vibe.

I may be biased as I have been eagerly awaiting the release of this record ever since I learned that it might one day become even a possibility, but the half hour of misanthropic sludge and deadly doom on offer across both sides of this LP confirm that it's one of the heaviest releases to be unleashed this year. Ignore at your peril, and prepare to abandon all hope.

You can stream, and buy both digital and vinyl versions of this split via Southern Lord.

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...

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.

Noothgrush / Suppression split 5"

Noothgrush were the band of my summer. I'd quit my job, packed up all my possessions, and dropped out of life to go bum around Europe for the summer and finally catch all the European tours and fests I was sick of missing out on. I got to see some of my favourite bands that I never thought I'd get a chance to see, some of them even twice. Sleep, Thou, Jucifer, Discharge, The Obsessed, Nasum, Pentagram... but Noothgrush were one of the biggest deals.

I got to see their first ever European show at Heavy Days In Doom Town fest in Copenhagen, as well as a tiny club show at the Hafenklang in Hamburg. They totally blew me away both times, yet both times I stood at the merch table foaming at the mouth with frustration because I couldn't buy any of their records due to
A: lack of money to spare. If I got an LP I couldn't get dinner.
And B: no space in the backpack I would be lugging around for months for records to go undamaged.
Which was frustrating since they had pretty much every release they've put out on vinyl, stacks of self-titled LPs, a box of Failing Early Failing Oftens... it broke my heart. They also had a neat little 5" split that came with it's own jigsaw puzzle which I wanted for sheer novelty value. But I refrained, saved my money, and regretted not buying anything the whole time I was away.

So first call when my money had almost run out and I had to come back 'home' was to buy the records I'd been unable to get on my trip. Top of my list was the weird Noothgrush puzzle. Turns out including jigsaws more than double the price of a record, so I settled on just the split.

Noothgrush contribute one track 'Flee From Hunger And Disease', which also appears on the Erode The Person compilation. It's two minutes of the creepiest, crawling sludge, an utterly hopeless ode to mankind's fear and hatred of itself. So y'know, classic Noothgrush.

Suppression's side is one track of fucking bizarre noise -'Cyanide (Iceman)'- before leading into a more straightforward grind track - 'Amputated Brain Stem'. The grind track is mixed all in the red and sounds pissed as fuck. It ends with the NWA sample "Daaaamn that shit was dope!"
Not much more to say!

This split was meant to be released in 1998 but hasn't seen the light of day until now, and I'm glad it finally came out. It's short but most definitely sweet, in it's own twisted way. Highly recommended.

UK/EU folks can get a copy (with or without puzzle) from Blow The Reactors:
http://blowthereactors.blogspot.co.uk/2012/05/noothgrush-suppression-split-5-out-now.html
http://blowthereactors.bigcartel.com/product/noothgrush-suppression-split-5-puzzle

USA/Canada dudes and dudesses can get theirs (and the self-titled LP) from Fuck Yoga:
http://hellmilitia.com/

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.

Noothgrush - Erode The Person

As I lower the needle on this record, the world outside my window is chaos.

My little corner of the world is being blasted by winds of up to 130mph (apparently), rivers have burst their banks, the roads are paved with black ice, trees creak, snap, and are uprooted, windows of high-rise buildings shatter and rain glass on the idiotic few who have ventured out in this harsh night.
I have been stuck inside a shell of a factory with no heating for hours, waiting until I can hitch a ride back to my hometown with anyone going even near that direction.
Today has not been a good day.

Arriving home to find the repress of Noothgrush's 'Erode The Person' LP lurking behind my storm doors wasn't so much a pleasant surprise as a fucking necessity. A soundtrack to the foulest of moods on the foulest of days.

 

So it was with actual NEED to hear something other than a howling gale that I cranked up the volume, collapsed on my floor and let the opening squalls of feedback fill the room.

The feedback lasts mere seconds before Chiyo Nukaga's tumbling, tribal, one-woman-drum-circle kicks in, accompanied by a woozy riff for a couple of bars before the whole thing falls apart with a howl.
Things slow to a neanderthal stomp, the track crashing along haphazardly, held together by one of the most corrosive tones I've heard. It lumbers, the strings bend, tempos shift, and bassist/vocalist Gary rages against "the closed mind of my species".
The tempo lurches up and down, before settling into a doomy plod towards the finish line. The feedback rises and consumes the whole thing once again.

"People are scared, angry, hostile, hate everything, don't know what they hate, don't have anybody else to talk to... just angry, desperate!"

So begins the second track, the 9-minute slog 'Deterioration'. It goes from that sample into one of the doomiest marches I've heard in a while, all spaced-out strings and battered cymbals.

There's enough space in the music to focus on the words, reading along with the lyric sheet as I go, something I NEVER do. Matching these words to this song makes for just about one of the biggest downers you can experience outside of chemical narcotic experimentation.
About halfway through the riff switches up to something a little more light-hearted. Relatively speaking, of course. Oh, spoke too soon, it crashes out into a hungover series of droning, aching picked-out notes.
The last third of the song is almost cheery, with lyrics concerning the extinction of the species as it stands, and 'a rise of altruism and compassion [...] what we know as human will be dead and a superior species will thrive'. Probably the most positive lyrics ever spewed from the gaping maw of doom.

The final track of side A is a Pink Floyd cover. I fucking hate Pink Floyd. I'll give it a shot anyway.
The guitar tone is fuzzed-up and nasty, so it already surpasses anything I've ever heard by the most over-rated band in the world.
This cover is an exercise in minimalism, the drums hitting sparsely but hard, the strings stretching out their contribution to breaking point. I dig this, but it's still never gonna make me reconsider my opinion about the band being covered.

Side B claws it's way out of my speakers with a wretched scrrrape of a song, 'Oil Removed'. Fucking foul. That's a good thing, incase it wasn't obvious. At a running time of three-n-a-half minutes, it's probably the most accessible thing on the whole record. But that's a purely relative term, obviously, it's still a rotting corpse at a beauty pageant compared to other songs of this made-for-radio length.

Final and title track, Erode The Person, is a low and slow beast. Over a minute passes before the other instruments join the bowel-shuddering bass. It's a torturous ten-minute slab of self-loathing, hateful noise, and it's just what I needed to hear tonight. No sarcasm, it really is.
With just a couple of minutes to go, the song momentarily races for the finish line with a downright little boogie of a riff before exhausting itself into an out-of-breath finale.

I mentioned before that I rarely pay attention to the lyrics of most bands operating within the sludge idiom, but this band actually has great mini-essays accompanying each track. These songs, the words, they actual MEAN something. If I knew more about existentialism, environmentalism, gender politics, and the examination of the self in relation to the environment it inhabits, I'd be able to pinpoint their references, but as it stands I'm a fucking philistine, so all I can do is appreciate the themes and words as they are presented here.
This is sludge to get your neurons firing.

I normally don't write this bullshit with the intent to recommend releases, I don't review records so much as simply document my own thoughts on them, giving me a chance to really think about what I'm hearing, but I can wholeheartedly recommend this album. If you're a fan of heavy music with something to say (even if you have to decipher the inhuman screeches with the aid of the record insert), please get a hold of this album as it was originally intended.

I picked this disgusting little beauty up from Portland, Oregon's PARASITIC RECORDS. The guy who runs it was super fast in getting back to me about buying this, and the delivery was fast as fuck too, so support this excellent label/distro by either picking this up, or checking out what else they've got for your listening displeasure.
http://parasiticrecords.blogspot.com/

There aren't many places to hear the almighty Noothgrush online, but they are experiencing something of a resurgence at the moment, with reissues coming out on various labels, a collection of radio sessions or something out on Southern Lord, and an appearance scheduled for next year's Maryland Death Fest.

Now if only they'd get confirmed for Roadburn...