Noothgrush - Failing Early, Failing Often

Falling Early, Falling Often is a lesson in pure, unfiltered USA sludge mania. Channeling that Eyehategod school of combining time-warped Sabbath groove with downtuned desperation, Noothgrush's dirty sound shines like a revealing black light through the dry, crisp and restrained production job which dominates most of the tracks on this collection. (Why is a lot of doom produced this way, is it to cram *all* of that riff in when recorded at what I can only assume is an obscene volume?)

The icing on the cake for me is the inclusion of Star Wars themed tracks. I mean, a sludge track called fucking "Sith" is just monolithic in title alone (thankfully the sound backs it up!), and the dirged-out version of "Imperial March / Alderaan" is pure bliss for any nerdy metalhead. What I also like about this record is that the tracks don't drone on for too long, which seems to be a staple with the slower end of metal. I get it, obviously, but I won't say it isn't refreshing to encounter a slightly more brisk pace on this kind of album. More Noothgrush please!