Heathen Bastard ~ Heathen Bastard (2013)
With a name like Heathen Bastard, the listener would expect some heavy, gnarly metal, regardless of what sort it is, and anything less would be false advertising. Luckily for all of us, this is some heavy, gnarly, bludgeoning Sludge Metal, the kind that makes you want to drink copious amounts of hard liquor and possibly start a fight for absolutely no reason. Sharing a drummer with the Stoner Metal band Thieving Coyote, both bands like the groove, but that's where most of the similarities end. Laying down a monster drum part, the sort that pierces ear drums with each hit and pulverizes minds into fine powder with the overbearing bass riffs, put that with the crunchy, thick guitar riffs and snarled vocals emanating from each track, and you have the official recipe for Sludge. While it is hard to pick a favorite from the five tracks that grace their self-titled release, if I had to give one song the crown, it'd probably be "Buzzard in the Tree". Opening with some feedback and a couple of cymbal crashes it takes almost no time for a plodding bass riff to come hurling down from above and lay waste to the landscape on impact, like some asteroid. With the guitar riff marching along the same path, the vocal performance starts out snarled and guttural, then proceeds to stay that way while the ground shaking music gives way to short interludes of feedback and noise in true EyeHateGod fashion. The track never stays down for long though, and comes right back to continue its slow, brutal death march, all the way to the end. With the price tag of only a few bucks on Bandcamp, that's your only way to their music really, but streaming is always free, and these guys are definitely worth a spin, out of morbid curiosity if nothing else.
~Skip
For Fans Of; Bongzilla, EyeHateGod, Electric Wizard
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