Death is June - Looking Back in Anger at Slugdge 's "Gastronomicon"

Here is another example of how you can have it both ways, you can be brutally heavy, yet still care about songs and have a sound that is your own. Do I hear influences in what they do but overall they have their own sound. First off though are we going to talk about the fact they are called sludge with an extra g , but are death metal ? Sludge often uses low growled vocals but this makes a clear line in the sand that these are death emtal vocals , not to mention all the blinding fast riffage they throw at you. The clean vocals that come in are almost power metal, the opposite of sludge's crusty  punk roots. I do like the adventurous progressive spirit they attack their songs with instead, so not complaining about this .  "Lettuce Prey" has some amazingly catchy riffs . 

It surprises me that a bigger deal was not made of this album back when it came out as these riffs are fucking relentless even when they get more prog on "the Sound of Mucous' . They lock down harder on grooves with "Slimewave Zero" .  "Invertahate' relies on speed so much it almost seems more like black metal thanks to the buzz of the guitar.  "Salters of Madness" leans into the more brutal speedy side of what they do , kinda of picking up where the previous song left off and begins to sound a little more like every one else. 

They use clean vocals to break up the more blasty mc nasty parts of " Pax Araena" which is not playing to their strongest of strengths but is an improvement rather than allowing themselves to sink into a mushy mire of heaviness that all sounds the same, making the front end of this album stronger than the rest of it , but still more solid than most.  So much so that I will round this one up to a 9.5