Stomach : "Midnight in Pain"

 

These are the dudes from Weekend Nachos playing some blown out feed back ridden doomy sludge. Half the punk boogie of Eyehategod, and more oppression as these tunes are pounded into your skull. Sure this is heavy as fuck, but heavy is pretty much where things begin and end. The title track sounds almost just like the opening song. The vocals are a shouted growl with a touch of throaty anguish. If you like slow and dense then perhaps that is all that is needed to keep you happy when it comes to music. If that is the case then I need to get your weed dude's number. I need a little more in terms of dynamics, but get what they are going for. I have always said sludge is doom for punk rockers and continue to prove myself right with this album. 

When they do switch gears on "Double Lung Transplant" it is a punk outburst, that I guess the kids these days are calling power violence. They go back to a lumbering creep of a crawl that is a little darker. I need more darkness, and a little more ambiance than just feedback. Though the guitars are gritty and mean as fuck, which is something else many of you might be pacified with. But I am sticking to Delta 8 and not on that level. The vocals are mixed further back, which in terms of sound is a variation from what we have heard before this song. But in terms of songwriting, it leaves something to be desired. 

Ok, I hit the pen again, lets see if it improves "Tooth Decay" but it rumbles past my ears without causing me to pay attention. It just sounds like low frequency rumbling. "Ocular Migraine" has them angry enough. I am convinced of the wretched mood, I just wish they were not such one trick ponies sonically. Crushing could apply to what happens on "Bathwater" but that has been the mood of the hours as this album has unfolded, so it might be more crushing if the weight of sound hitting you varied, so there was some surprised to it. It now feels less crushing, because you have already been crushed and are numb to it. It does ebb down into atmosphere, but it is just slower, with the same tones being expounded upon. They get let it ring out for the rest of the song.

After sitting through four minutes of feed back they finally get some motion in the ocean they are trying to drown you in. I will give this album a 6, you can round it up to a 7, if you like to huff glue while you smoke pot from a milk carton. That is the kind of  numb my head would have to be in to make me pay attention to the monochrome grumbling of their sound, that works off sound more than songs, but they are convincing while doing it and have it dialed in how they want it, and you might be into that.