ninehertz

There are many attributes that make up Fiadh Productions’ greatness – the consistently stellar music associated with the label being the prime one of course, but also the frequency of releases – every Friday you’ll find multiple additions to their vast treasure trove of a catalogue and then the fierce and immovable left wing stance in amongst an increasingly dark and foreboding political landscape in the USA and globally.

Doom isn’t by any means its primary genre output (hello raw or folky black metal and dungeon synth), but when they go there they go hard and unearth gold from across the world. The latest evidence: Entrøpia, from Bologna, and their satisfyingly thick wedges of sludge.

It begins with a Bill Hicks quote which delays proceedings as it encourages me to dig out his Revelations show for the first time in many years and watch all the way through. It’s still relevant, and you can see why the band use it here. Returning to the music, the sample is quickly overtaken by a nice big doom riff, leaning into sludge territories with an angsty kineticism propelling it forward, a generous helping of both the Weedeater stoner side and the bleaker nihilistic end of the genre.

The recording is raw, which adds nicely to the rough and ready grime of it all, the shuffling cymbals, the hanging riffs dripping with filth, desperate as sludge should sound. Occasionally it goes faster, such as on Defeat-Delete, into raw punk, although even that occasionally slips down the register into Eyehategod voids. Similarly, Horror Vision is driven forward by wide-eyed adrenaline peaked vocals before breaking down into a delicious Iron Monkey lurching riff.

It closes, as is often the way, with its longest song, an eleven minute plus number, slowing back into doom’s gait, laboriously dragging itself through on a minimal wave of low end tone until it breaks in the seventh minute for a cataclysmic violent, yet still lethargic end.

It’s a great way to end, but the enduring memory of Down in the Swamp of Human Bleakness is that punchy, inebriated staggering one-two of sludge and punk – there’s a moment somewhere in the middle which has me reminiscing of the long lost sludge supergroup Dukes of Nothing – sludge in its grubbiest form. Which is as strong a compliment as I can possibly end on I suppose.