Mudbath

Avignon's Mudbath are opening their account with a brand of sludge that hazes out its hardcore belligerence with vintage doom and black elements to create un triptyque pour la fin du temps that bodes well for whatever future they have remaining.

Opening track 'Loserwood' commences with a stretched-out lead full of piercing, discordant melody before everything else joins in, in perfect disagreement. This is metronomic, screaming sludge which takes a few breathers for some blackened jangle. The tone achieved is impressively catastrophic.

'Mudjahideen' sounds like Nocturno Culto and Axl Rose having an argument about playing Eyehategod too loud on a Sunday. This dual vocal sparring develops over a truly sickened backdrop that is part fuzzed-out groove, part King/Hanneman witchery. Suddenly, the clouds part and a glorious Iommic outro solo evaporates the swamp. It's the pick of the tracks on here.  'Smells Like Teen Cunt', as you'd imagine, confronts the practicalities of a transition to biofuels. Similar in style to 'Mudjahideen', it makes good use of evil goaty lead figures spiralling away under the prevailing filth.

Occasionally, it feels like the tracks are developing in a fairly arbitrary fashion, like a more stoned Verdun; Mudbath should certainly go on to create more purposeful, focused pieces. As a debut EP, however, there are enough great things going on here for 'Red Desert Orgy' to alert the discerning head to their future output. They could dig out one of these tracks for a live set in 30 years and among the perplexed expressions, I'd slowly raise the horns and mutter into my oxygen mask “Cool … I remember 'Smells Like Teen Cunt' when it came out.”

#doom #Mudbath #sludge #Stubble #Darren Bibby