Today’s foray into riff depravity takes us into a deep, dark, slightly moist place, inhabited by the twisted sludge/grind creature known as FISTULA!
*Fistula:noun, plural fis·tu·las, fis·tu·lae [fis-choo-lee] Show IPA .
1.
Pathology . a narrow passage or duct formed by disease or injury, as one leading from an abscess to a free surface, or from one cavity to another.
2.
Surgery . an opening made into a hollow organ, as the bladder or eyeball, for drainage.
3.
Veterinary Pathology . any of various suppurative inflammations, as in the withers of a horse (fistulous withers) characterized by the formation of passages or sinuses through the tissues and to the surface of the skin.
4.
Obsolete . a pipe, as a flute.*
If you like your bands, gritty, grimey, dirty, soaked in gasoline, and then dragged through a gravel field behind your truck till the son comes up, Fistula is probably already in your wheelhouse. If you haven, and Burdened by Your Existence), 7 EPs (For a Better Tomorrow, Smoke Acid, Shoot Pills, We, the Beast, Loser, Goat, Goat Remixes/Year of the Fork, and Northern Aggression), 13 Splits (Because Sometimes Two Are Better Than One, Crushers Killers Destroyers!, Fistula/Sloth, Sofa King Killer/Fistula, dot(.)/Fistula, Burmese/Fistula, Methods of the Dissented/Methmouth and the Dead Teeth, Fistula/SMG, Nano-Split Serie Vol. 1, Fistula/Necrocannibalistic Vomitorium, Fistula/Monkeypriest, Instant Death Syndrome/Drugs and Deception, and Fistula/Radiation Sickness), and 1 Compilation (Northern Aggression + Loser).
This band has been prolific as hell, what with that many collaborations, and tons of EP work, and their sound has just gotten harder. Most recent releases that I am familiar with, Goat, Loser, and Northern Aggression, are all varied in their context and content, but the sound remaisn very similar throughout them. They have the acidic guitar fuzz with heavy power dhords, not a lot of technical or simple shreddign at all. Its heavy riff, riff heavy, with the rest of the band just plugging along right beside them into the bowels of hell. Drums are simple and pop nicely, bass just grinds along to everything. Th evocals are just tormented screams of hell’s playthings given the same script, communicating a rawness that just goes for the listener. It’s brutality distilled down until it could suck chrome off a tailpipe.
The Goat EP is where I found them, with a decidedly evil topic of mass murder and serial killing. This album differs from the other two, as they went LOOOOOOOOWWWWWW with the tuning, and slowed it way the hell down. This is a monster, adn it’s going to take a couple listens to get everything. It’s a huge wall of noise that caves in your chest with the rumble, and the band just wants to strip you down, flesh from tendon from bone, with sound alone. The content is truly morbid, with a focus on the terrible tasks that serial killers undertake, and the depravities that are unveiled when the mask is pulled away. The art work is pretty good at communicating the horrors, but not really. The songs on Goat should bring the mood down enough to bury with titles like:
Ohio Death Toll Rising
One Chair and an Electrical Cord
The Ones that Got Away
So Far Sowell So What
Mission Accomplished
The songs are further enhanced by audio footage, real or staged, detailing the accomplishments of the killer(s) detailed with the album. This is an album that your parents would have sent you to the local pastor to get disciplined for even possessing. Its a great addition to any sort of collection.
Loser and Northern Aggression both follow a similar vein, with the EP titles setting up the contained songs. NA plays a bit closer to grindcore than Goat, and Loser sounding like a garage grind/noise album from Primate or Anal Cunt (who they speak about in the song “I’m Glad Nate’s Not in Ax Cx,’ on Loser). Loser is especially good, as the band loosens up on the rhythm and beat sections, allowing them all to play faster, louder, and much bigger. Where Goat had a crushing wall of dirty fuzz and hate, these are just heavy and pissed the fuck off, with some fuzz thrown on top, like the last handful of dirt on a coffin.
With this much material, especially given the prolific nature of this band, there is tons of material for the aspiring collector of all things scuzzy in the metal sub-genres, and you should have no problems finding something to wipe the gristle off your lips to.
*DIscography found here.*
