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! 

Suppression / Noothgrush - Split 5"

Suppression are quickly becoming one of my favourite grindcore acts. I mean, how long have this band been around? And I only heard of them a few months ago! What an idiot! Despite this fact, I've had the mp3s of this split on my computer for ages thanks to Grindcore Karaoke, but listening to it always got pushed back because I have so much stuff to get through...which is a curse as well as a blessing.

 

On this wee little 5", Suppression resort to a very Man Is The Bastard-y mix of harsh noise followed by bass-driven grind madness. I know Suppression have their own thing going on, but MITB definitely springs to mind whilst spinning this. It's over in a fecking flash, unlike Noothgrush's side which drags out a bit longer. Noothgrush take a much more traditional full-band approach of just ripping out a track for us. Very sludgy!

 

All in all this is a pretty awesome 5", but as you would probably expect it doesn't last very long. This piece of wax exists thanks to the good people at Blow The Reactors and Fuck Yoga. My version is the simple black one, but 150 of these little buggers come with a 48 piece puzzle. These editions are pretty rare, but you can still get one for around £10.