Feeling glum as your holidays wind to a close? Already starting to feel down about the prospect of trudging ‘back to school’ in a few depressingly short weeks? Why not chase away those summertime blues with some nihilistic Sludgecore courtesy of Buffalo, NY’s Water Torture?
I came across this album stream by accident whilst browsing my Facebook feed’s endless barrage of tour dates and promo photos. It popped up courtesy of Stoner-Metal behemoths Bongripper advertising it pretty hard so I gave it a sample on the basis that, “fuck it, what else am I doing with my time?” and it immediately knocked me on my ass.
Pillbox is 17 tracks of crushingly low end bass thrashed out across 25 tempo-defying minutes of old fashioned Grindcore with a distinct flavour of Louisiana Sludge; to paraphrase, it absolutely destroys.
…sections of atmospheric crunch that hit you right in the gut and reverberate through your insides…
For all its oppressive fuzz and tone of utter despair it owes more to bands like Spazz and the comically short-lived Powerviolence scene of the mid 90’s than fellow Sludge Metal purveyors like Eyehategod or Nottingham’s own pioneering Iron Monkey (RIP). In place of Stoner-Rock grooves, slowed down Sabbath riffs and punk inspired palm-chugging are frantic jumps between spasmodic Grindcore drumming with manic riffing and glacially paced sections of atmospheric crunch that hit you right in the gut and reverberate through your insides.
Each startlingly brief song is separated by Merzbowesque passages of harsh electronic noise and unsettlingly dissonant soundscapes that maintain the aural assault and keep you on your toes even during the ostensible breaks in the action. For a record so bleak and outwardly hateful these interludes are occasionally tinged with a strange beauty, Creature of Repetition being a particular highlight, but one with a tritonal discordance that refuses to resolve and leaves you feeling like something awful is about to happen (and it usually does, quickly).
For a record so bleak and outwardly hateful these interludes are occasionally tinged with a strange beauty…
Even the album cover carries a legacy, displaying a black and white distance shot of what appears to be a disused building in a rundown part of an almost empty city, with ultra-simplistic black and white font. It presents itself as an obvious nod to their Powerviolence/Grindcore forebears like Capitalist Casualties and Infest- and Pillbox is absolutely a record worthy of giving such a nod.
Give Pillbox a shot – it’s only little, bless it, and you’ll definitely be moved to some sort of reaction regardless of whether you “enjoy” it or not.
5/5
Bradley Finney
…Bradley is listening to Algernon Cadwallader – ‘Parrot Flies’ …
