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Country: Sweden/USA Genre: Death Punk/Sludge Doom Record Label: Plague Island Records Release Date: 2008 Track list: |
Modorra/Fistula Split 12" -
Methods of the Dissented/Methmouth and the Dead Teeth
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Modorra |
Fistula |
A split 12”, half “death punk” and half sludge doom? I think my quizzical expression can be excused, if only because most of the splits I have are pairings of similarly-styled bands.
Side A belongs to Modorra, a self-described “death punk” band, from Sweden. And what you may ask, as I did before listening to their ten songs, is “death punk?” Well, to my ears these songs are heavily indebted to a couple of well-regarded debut albums: Bolt Thrower's In Battle There is No Law, Carcass' Reek of Putrefaction, Autopsy's Severed Survival. If I was to make a short list of Modorra's contemporaries, they would include Machetazo, Jigsore Terror, Dishammer, and maybe Disfear. So in other words, Modorra's “death punk” is heavy on the death and early grind and not all that punk.
Most of the songs blast by in less than two minutes, a thick barrage of grinding bass, slashing guitars and pummeling drums. There is not a lick of technicality to Modorra and that's refreshing given the masturbatory technical antics of too many modern death metal bands; and while the playing isn't sloppy, there's a definite swinging looseness to Methods of the Dissented that reminds me of death metal's and grindcore's feral beginnings, when instrumental prowess was not a given. Many of the riffs are simplistic and slightly punkish, the same clusterfucked Discharge-on-speed punkish of early Napalm Death and Extreme Noise Terror. These riffs are mostly played at the same ridiculous old fashioned grindcore speed and it makes the songs sound a little too similar after a while, even as short as they are. Some of the slightly slower songs (because these rampaging Swedes never slow really slow down), “Zombie Earth” and “Together They Shall Hatch,” have definite similarities to the modern warcrust of Sanctum and Stormcrow, heavily influenced by Bolt Thrower and Axegrinder. Listening to this I'm thinking Modorra must be an awesome live band, and to my jaded ears these ten songs are closer to the original spirit of death metal than most of the purposefully retro bands, and the thousands of “brutal” death metal gurgle and grunt bands. <7.0>
Side B belongs to Fistula, an American sludge doom band with which I have only a passing familiarity. They've been around for years and have more than a dozen releases, only one that own and a couple of others I have heard in passing. But after a few listens to “Methmouth and the Dead Teeth,” the twenty-one minute nightmarish sludge romp that is their contribution to the split, I've got more than a few Fistula releases to track down.
Because I don't know much about what other Fistula sounds like, I can only tell you about this song: it's a fucking beast. The feedback slowly fades in around 1:30 after some strange Asian carnival sounds and fifteen seconds later when the guitars come in I start drooling because this is the guitar tone that sludge and doom bands die for: there is no Sunn brighter, no Earth heavier, no Wizard more Electric, no Sleep deeper or darker than this sound. The opening riff trudges, crawls, creeps along slow and low and mean for four minutes-four fucking minutes!-before the drums crash in and either Corey Bing or Bahb Branca (I'm not sure who does vocals on this track, but I wish I did, because they are amazing!) lets loose a most horrible shriek, and Lord Almighty! I am home at last. “Methmouth…” is a sound I've long waited for: it marries Grief's trenchant misanthropic dirge to Toadliquor's ocean-heavy droning crush to Eyehategod's broken-down Southern sludge death blues. When the tempo picks up (just slightly, this never moves much faster than a stumbling pissdrunk hobo; Fistula speeds up the way Modorra slows down) at about 11:00, the power is ferocious-so angry I'm waiting for the members of Fistula to jump bodily out of my speakers and strangle me.
I can only think of three or four bands that have ever recorded sludge this mean and this heavy, and none of those, not Grief, not Eyehategod, not Cavity, ever sounded this pissed off. If those bands understood and accepted a certain amount of despair as natural to the human condition, Fistula's “Methmouth…” is a maniacally raging hymn against that acquiescence and acceptance: that being broken down and beaten up does not mean putting down the knife and shotgun. To listen is not to enjoy but to endure, to endure is to be baptized into a new religion: “…and the sludge everlasting. Amen.” <9.3>
This record gets two thumbs up from me. Modorra's side is very good, heavy crusty death punk that stomps and rages with the best of the new school and wouldn't sound out of place played next to any of the original grind-y death merchants. Fistula's side is truly great, one of the best and meanest and heaviest sludge doom tracks I've heard in too long. Many props to Plague Island on a split well done.
June 24, 2009
    
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