Haarp

These New Orleans filth dealers won't be flying under the radar for much longer, as despite a bad band name (which is supposed to be all lower case, to add aesthetic insult to phonetic injury), they can lay down some mean sludge. They've got all the elements around them down in NOLA, after all, and you can certainly hear the Crowbar influence, but this is even uglier (uglier than Crowbar!), slower, heavier, and sludgier. Tracks like opener "The Rise, The Fall" bring to mind sludge legends Grief, while "A New Reign" is catchy in the way that bands like Corrupted or Winter are "catchy" (meaning it's not catchy at all, but is somewhat memorable in its repetitive brutality). For a glimpse of just how heavy sludge can be while carrying a groove check out the drumming breakdown in "Minutia." Having all the songs run together is a wise move that only accentuates the brutality. With that band name, hour-long running time and demo-looking cover art, I went into this one expecting to be let down, but this is world-class sludge, and surely one of the heaviest releases of the year.