It’s very hard to make scary music that is actually scary. Even when, say, Carcass uses pictures of autopsies on their cover art of their death metal albums, the whole package can feel a bit…well…silly.
I don’t find Gaza’s No Absolutes In Human Suffering silly in the slightest.
In the wake of Israel’s genocide, Gaza’s incendiary band name invokes even more tragedy, rage, and brilliant humanity than it did during the band’s 2004-2013 heyday. And their depictions of violence and death feel both apropos and timeless.
Musically, Gaza exists on the speedier side of the sludge spectrum. Their abrasive, relentless music brings grindcore, math rock, and noise under the fetid blanket of sludge. The band’s knots of overdriven guitars, hardcore drumming, throat-wrecking vocals, and bleak subject matter make for a rough listen even by sludge standards.
Come for the thrashing “Mostly Hair and Bones Now” in which a dead horse is picked up piece by piece, and stay through the fuzzy-static-y comedown of “Routine and then Death.”
It’ll put a smile on your face.
No, wait, the other thing.
Back when Metallica was becoming best known for cutting their hair, seeing a shrink, and putting bloody jizz on their album covers, Mastodon was a big deal. I believe a lot of prodigal sons and daughters returned to the metal fold after listening to 2004’s Leviathan.
But Remission ain’t Leviathan. Remission is their sludge album.
Between Brann Dailor’s wild drumming and Bill Kelliher and Brent Hinds interlocking guitars, all the bones are in place for them to live up to their names as a world-bestriding, thrash/prog colossus. But on Remission they sound charmingly ragged, tough but fragile.
Sludge is best when it feels like it could throw a massive punch, but get knocked off balance at the same time, for this music is as much about weakness as strength.
“March of the Fire Ants” is an all-timer
I love Isis – not the transnational Salafi jihadist militant organization (of which I have mostly negative feelings*), nor the ancient Egyptian goddess (of which I have neutral feelings) – the band. But I’m not sure they’re a sludge band. Post-rock, post-metal, post-whatever, sure. But sludge?
Well, their debut, 2000’s Celestial, makes the case that while they would always be an art rock band, Isis could’ve been a killer sludge band as well. (It doesn’t hurt that secretly most sludge bands are art rock bands covered in slime anyway.)
Isis work by layering textures atop each other, exploiting dynamics, and performing unexpected rhythmic tricks, but they also kick up an unholy racket, as they do at the end of “Swarm Reigns (Down)” and the ironically named “Gentle Time.” Also, check out the sloppy feedback storm on “Deconstructing Towers,” a rare chaotic (and sludgy) indulgence for a band who’s usually so buttoned up.
* I think the flag is kind’ve cool.
Rate Your Music readers consider Acid Bath’s When the Kite String Pops the best sludge metal album of all time. While I typically have issues with lists drawn that are drawn by consensus (IMDB users consider The Shawshank Redemption to be the best movie of all time, which…no), I’ll side with the vox populi in this case: When the Kite String Pops is the best sludge metal album of all time.
Of NOLA’s Holy Trinity of Sludge, Acid Bath split the difference between Eyehategod’s junkie art and Crowbar’s classic rock aspirations. They have everything you would want in a sludge band: the riffs, the mess, the despair, the volume, the dynamics, the tempo changes, and the interstitials. And they mix it up, giving us a few acoustic guitars between the rants and yelling to lighten things up. Hell, even on your worst day, the sun comes up, the birds still sing, and the bees are trying to have sex with them – as is my understanding.
Somehow Kite’s John Wayne Gacy clown cover art is less disturbing that the euthinasia doc Jack Kevorkian’s original that adorns the band’s follow-up Paegan Terrorism Tactics.
If New Orleans birthed sludge, then Georgia must’ve weaned it, having spawned Mastodon, Kylesa, and Baroness. Of the Georgia Dirty Three, Baroness is the cleanest.
They’re also another band that I don’t really consider sludge. Although Baroness arch baron John Baizley has long claimed sludge roots, like the members of Mastodon, he seems to have higher ambitions than swimming in the sludge sewer for his whole career.
Check out Baroness’ Baizley-painted album art; this guy likes to make pretty things. Hell, Red Album opener “108 Rays of Pinion” is the gosh darn prettiest thing on this list.
Dan Slessor writes for Kerrang!: “[Baroness] manage one trick that eludes nearly all of their peers: Red Album is frequently uplifting.” Now I hate to be the Genre Police, here, but if an album is “uplifting,” I don’t think it can be a sludge album. It can be hard rock, it can be metal, but it can’t be sludge unless listening to it makes you want to shoot a lethal load of smack and nod off in a warm bath tub.
Red Album makes me want to do pull-ups.
Besides, despite having a head that looks like it unhinges its jaw like a South Park Canadian to hit the high notes, Baizley is too gosh darn healthy to be a sludge musician. \
Not to play genre games again, but I don’t think I understand the difference between sludge and doom.
Cult Of Luna’s Salvation opens with the 12:26 “Echoes,” a lumbering epic that builds and builds, but never quite peaks before dissipating. It reminds me of nothing so much as the marathon doom metal band YOB, except Luna’s singer Klaus Rydberg (he’s Swedish) doesn’t seem to be expressing depression or exultation…he seems pissed.
At this point, I’m coming around to the idea that sludge can be either the diarrheic shuddering of Eyehategod and Acid Bath or the monolithic soundscapes of Neurosis or Isis.
Cult of Luna, a pristine post-rock band that yells instead of sings, falls in the latter camp – if you can count them sludge at all. Judging by this publicity shot, these boys look so dapper they probably comb their pubes. That’s not very sludgy.
Feels like you should either sound or be skuzzier for entrance into the sludge club.
Also, I don’t really understand why the “hipster metal” band Deafheaven (who we’ve discussed here) was such a big deal, when Cult of Luna did their whole thing a decade earlier. Perhaps it’s because they’re Swedish and the world is racist against translucent people.
BUZZOV*EN’S TO A FROWN
After these last couple art metal bands masquerading as sludge because their members wore the same shirt two days in a row, I’m happy to discover that Buzzov*en are the genuine article.
On their debut To a Frown, Buzzov*en make the music you would expect a junkie couple would make while dope sick. They hate each other, themselves, and the world, but they love dope. And that’s reason enough to keep going for another day. Buzzov*en express mostly grinding suffering, but they rock out, too.
Kerrang! compares Buzzov*en to Mudhoney, an apt comp, as they have as much garage rock in them as metal.
Kirk Fisher’s vocals sound so despairing, Igor’s bass sounds so mean, and the interstitial samples are…well, they’re kind’ve corny at this point but I’m sure they were cool at the time.
Buzzov*en’s live shows were notoriously raucous, and the band themselves were notoriously chaotic. The willingness to ruin your life should be a prerequisite for any band deigning to call themselves “sludge.” Thank gods we can close out this column with an actual sludge band.
These guys do not look like they drink enough water:
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