Yet more sludgy, earthy, rectum splitting noise to add to my stack of Lair of the Minotaur, Ultralord, Black Cobra, Starkweather and Desolate Void. Honestly, I think I’m losing my hearing, and TAIS is partly responsible as listening to this album repeatedly made me kind of feel like that first torture victim in the movie Hostel; an immobile, terrified gibbering mess with puke dripping down my chin, and the contents of my bladder emptied.

With members from Will Haven and Oddman, TAIS is a lumbering, down tuned…..well, sloth of rather hefty proportions. The pace rarely goes above a lethargic crawl, with the occasional trot but its bludgeoning production makes all paces able to strip paint. The tracks are painful exercises in a tempered. restrained heaviness that never peaks but still fulfills with sheer density and girth.

Vocalist Justin Godfrey overlays the massive wall of nosie with an appropriately corrosive scream, making the whole thing even more painful. And to their credit, TAIS don’t milk or drag out their caustic dirges into waning drone fests and the 2-5 minute tracks start and end with abrupt and caustic dissonance.

Diving straight into the rumbling “Hats Made of Veal and that New Car Smell”, TAIS sort of beat on you with the pace and power of 11 rounds with Butterbean; you see each punch coming, but it connects anyway and breaks something vital. All 9 tracks are nefarious offenders but “I am the Carcass”, “I’d Rather Die than Fly”, “A Hot Pink Shell or My Former Self”, and “Climax of a Nightmare” are particularly guilty. When not pummeling you into submission, The Sloth is also very capable of churning out some nice grooves; “Parasite Hilton and Other Flaws Inherent To Wealth” and “A Distant Pond From the Rivers of Human Limelight” impressive purveyors of Sabbathian lurch.

With the exception of maybe closing instrumental “Sailing to the Edge of the Earth”, there are no interludes, no segues, no tangents and no fucking gimmicks, as The Abominable Iron Sloth simply delivers a waylaying chunk of tooth shattering heaviness.

[Visit the band's website]

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