Thursday, August 8, 2013

EP Review - "Swamp Lung" by Swamp Lung



"If you smoke herb please partake before listening at maximum volume."

That was how the email to us from Swamp Lung ended. "Okay", I thought, "don't mind if I do." and so I went about the task of vigorously partaking before I sat down to give this s/t EP from South Australians Swamp Lung a listen. It was sound advice indeed as it nearly prepared me for what I was about to hear pour forth from my speakers...and ohmyeldergods..this..is..some..heavy...fuuuu..

Within 7 seconds from the teasing drums and feedback that open "Infant Thought" and this EP, a black hole of doom opens and sucks your mind into a dimension of slow thunderous beats, even slower crushing riffs and painfully tortured guitar wails that stretch as far as the inner eye can see. This vista of doom ripples with tidal waves of feedback which serve to mold the ever evolving riffs with sludgy growls coming from the vocalist not making an appearance until 05:56 into this thirteen and half minute lowend beast. The tension is increased as the song unfolds with thudding drums, feedback manipulation and bulbous guitar and bass chugs building Melvins-like to the point of snapping into mind sucking black hole sludge for the remainder of the song, while slurring throaty screams and growls spew dirt in your ears.

A slack swaggering riff opens "Constant Reinforcement" in a haze of smokey Sleep vibes with plodding stoned drums and lung burned howls/grunts. The song grows a slouching groove with nowhere to be in a hurry, just happy to fuzz along at a snails pace, bathing in a sea of lowend freqs for a while until the final quarter the energy is raised by a blow into the furnace of heavy metal causing a pleasing rock out until it is torn down again into righteously obnoxious doom and sludge taking to us to the end.

"Starspawn" rocks the sludge fuck out right from the beginning, A river of fat and fast sludge consumes you and carries you along into an abyss of netherworldy grunts, punishing skin hits and broken but crushing doom. Feedback squirms and wails like a tortured alien. I can imagine the spooks at some secret deep underground military base playing Swamp Lung to captured aliens, just to see the looks on their weird unhuman faces. The sadistic torturing of our galactic brothers and sisters continues with twisting and screeching feedback being the response and monumental walls of drone eking out drum freakouts and a movie sample that speaks of the human race being left as nothing more than a bed time story, a myth.

Perhaps the tortured twisting feedback is not the desperate screams of captured aliens being subjected to doom metal continuously at very high volume but the sounds of our own timely demise as "Blood Harvest" shows in a broken mash of analogue and digital noise. Our beautiful mother earth is imploded organically and virtually in fuzzy white noise until head and reality splitting feedbacks bend and morph into each other in and out and all over the place resulting in a final broken fade into nothing.

And so ends "Swamp Thing" by Swamp Thing, from Australia. I've noticed a lot of  great doom and sludge bands coming from over there the past few years and Swamp Lung are contenders for the one of the best of them so I'll be keeping an eye out for their future releases.




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