FISTULA

You wake up hung over with a pounding headache, your mouth tastes like a small animal crawled in it in the middle of the night and died, and you're pissed off at the realization that you spent your rent money at the strip club last night. The best advice is to drink a giant glass of water and crank up FISTULA's "Burdened by your Existence" because you might as well hear what you feel.

"Baby I ain't joking, you better back the fuck off!" That line from "The Butcher" sums up well the seething anger on display here. Every terse note squeezed out of the guitars of Corey Bing and Scott Stearns, and every vitriolic roar from the mouth of lead vocalist Steve Barcus is all about one thing: pain. This is FISTULA and the Ohio sludge kings hit another homerun with "Burdened by your Existence", more than likely the angriest record you'll hear all year. At an hour's worth of music across eight scathing tracks, you better be a sludge fan because this one ain't about crossover appeal. If you're unsure whether you've acquired the taste yet, the album seeks to separate the men from the boys with two long 'n slow steamrollers to open the proceedings, the nine-minute "Burn the Ladder" and the 10-minute "Destroying the Masters House (With the Masters Tools)" . After a few listens, the latter cut's namesake lyric has a way of burrowing into your brain and laying eggs. If you made it this far, then you might actually survive the rest of the trip.

Changeups are used sparingly during the album's first half, although "Vomit Black" does feature a compelling section where a naked bass line transitions to the next phase of crush, this time with a morbidly descending riff. It isn't until "Isolation Reward" (one of the standouts) that the group shifts gears in a few spots, and then really lets loose on "Cat Skulls are Thick" (with another line that you'll curse for invading your dreams) when the boys stomp on the gas pedal and go thrash/crust punk on your ass. "The Butcher", a towering, fearsome track boasts some cool transitional moments as well, a SABBATH-y riff change and a bass line that introduces another explosion of speed-kill intensity. A buzzing glob of ungodly ugliness called "Monkey Astronaut" (an instrumental) finishes the job and leaves you with the uneasy feeling that you've just been violated by an escaped convict called FISTULA. It hurts, doesn't it?