Thursday, June 20, 2013

... NIGHTSLUG "Dismal Fucker" (Album Review)

They did it again!

Nightslug, sludge metal trio from Düsseldorf / Germany, that had impressed me already with their 3 song demo from 2011 (read my review of the demo here), are about to release their first full length album “Dismal Fucker” ( July 19th 2013, Per Koro Records). 
  
This album is the invitation to a roller coaster ride on a colossal cyborg-like creature, a steam engine plus some mean slimy organic matter or the like. And if you’re only half as addicted to heavy downtuned slow filthy grooves, dynamic vicious drumming and nasty demon like snarly vocals as I am, you won’t decline that invitation. The ride sends you through a sonic wasteland of various scenarios and atmospheres. It starts off with the ponderously rolling, but menacingly powerful “No Relief”. With  the crushing “Dismal Fucker” and “Sick” it gains speed but won’t lose a bit of its heaviness. The creepy, ugly “All is Hell” starts to rearrange your already crushed brain cells to drive you straight into the apocalyptic “Die in Fire” with breathtaking blazing dynamic drumming to go crazy over, and then to the haunting “Into Oblivion” with its relentlessly vicious, corrosive vocals. The song also marks a kind of transitional point of the album going from a destructive rage into …. doom which is sealed with the depressing “MOTS” with groove laden riffs to die for and “On Fields of Mayhem” marching with a hypnotic repetitive rhythm into the final perdition.

Again Nightslug created a sludge monster that crawls through my ears into my brain and pours its thick heavy venom into it to take over control. And it’s no wonder it succeeds again. “Dismal Fucker” is a much bigger monster even than their demo is, not because there are more songs (eight) and more playing  time (about 42 minutes), but because Nightslug fed it with a whole lot of dark gloomy atmosphere that is capable of invoking nightmarish images. The songs are of deeper structure and of a variety that is, most notably concerning tempo, downright headspinning. And yet, and this is the best of it, there’s still this bold and direct brutal energy that I fell for on their demo, this exciting mix of sludge, hardcore and doom that I love so much, bass and guitar strings I can’t decide if I hear or feel them vibrating, rattling cymbals, pounding drums and vicious vocals.

Yes they did it again, they captured my brain, my heart and my soul !!!

The album will be available as vinyl and digital album via Per Koro Records and their bandcamp.


words by Ulla Roschat






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