Fistula

I love this still-kind-of-obscure Cleveland, OH sludge band, now on album number six, spitting out another tossed-off collection of raw punk/sludge/doom. These guys have the sound and feel down so pat that this legitimately sounds not just like Eyehategod albums, but even more deranged: it sounds like Eyehategod demos. Sometimes the songs speed along at a nice clip ("The Fang" or the raging "Black Sunday"), and at other times they move low, slow and horrible, like the rawest of the NOLA crew. "Kanker Nose" and "The Spider" are pure noisy punk rock, ugly and nasty, like something you haven't heard since the first scary basement show you attended when you were 14. The whole ordeal closes off with an appropriate cover of the Mentors' "Going through Your Purse." The CD version contains the band's self-released Loser EP from a couple years back, in case you need another half-hour of relentless sludge-punk beatings, which you do.