By Martin Elliott
(Image: © Unknown Photographer email fro removal or credit )
If Doom is all one family, then sludge is the weirdo cousin who shows up unannounced to the family party, then slinks off to a back room where they’ll hole up for weeks, surrounded by pizza boxes and bongs. From this dimly lit, fuggy lair comes Blunt Knife Castration with “Live Fast Die Slow”. Throughout its ten-track length, the album evokes dingy basement record shops where sickly incense mercifully masks less pleasant odors, or dingy basement gig venues where noxious skunk serves the same purpose. If that sounds like home to you (good on ya), it’s well worth your while to spend some time squatting with these Kent miscreants. Opener “Warhead” smashes down the doors with a grunt before running through the place like a jonesing addict who just. Can. Not. Sit.
No sooner have you settled into a riff than the next one throws you for a loop. This is a make or break moment, not for BKC but for the listener. If “Warhead” turns you off you might be best off elsewhere. For those who are left a bit giddy with the misanthropic joy of it, though, this cut is a filthy welcome mat enticing you into the rest of the album.
Interestingly it’s at this point where BKC are probably left amongst their own kind that the songs do settle down into somewhat more identifiable structures. Second track and lead single “Cut and Run” is an exemplar. There’s groove to be found here, in fact, but it’s the groove running down some back alley butcher’s slab, carrying along a steady stream of hazardous waste. With the title track that follows, too, the riffs almost slip into stoner rock territory, as occurs a few times across the album. This isn’t the happy-go-lucky strain of stoner for weekend weed warriors though. Why be happy go lucky when there are such nauseous thrills to be found in staying miserable and jinxed?
By fourth track “Lung Fungus” the dense atmosphere and omnipresent dread have really grown on you. It’s notable too that at the album’s grooviest moments, as on “Scunge”, the vocals seem to be at their nastiest. Whether this is a conscious decision or merely perception of contrast is up for debate but either way, it works. It would be a disservice to the likes of “The Misanthreeper” to refer to this as balance, though, when the track works so assiduously to keep the listener short of mental equilibrium. If you’ve any doubts on that score, “Crawl” will beat them out of you.
The uneasy listening, well placed samples and cracking titles continue with “Hard Times Come Sleazy” chugging along its merry/miserable way. Don’t get comfortable, though, as the back end of “Whiskey and Gristle” is lying in wait to give you a kick in the arse. It remains only for churning closer “Leave Behind” to bring things to a conclusion, leaving the listener disheveled and blearily stumbling back into the unwelcome light.
If you’ve got a crusty, sludgy itch that needs scratching, with “Live Fast Die Slow” Blunt Knife Castration might be just the rusty instrument you’re looking for.
The album releases on February 28th on Bandcamp and all streaming services, as well as on CD through Remorseless Records.
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