By Matt Hinch. Few bands can make you feel like you're wallowing in a vat of pig shit and be loving every minute of it the way Fistula can. Vermin Prolificus is their latest foray into a world of absolute filth and drug use. Vermin is as sludgy as they come. Rotting, fetid tone pulls the listener deep into the gutter, leaving a stink that lingers like death
By Matt Hinch.
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Few bands can make you feel like you're wallowing in a vat of pig shit and be loving every minute of it the way Fistula can. Vermin Prolificus is their latest foray into a world of absolute filth and drug use.
Vermin is as sludgy as they come. Rotting, fetid tone pulls the listener deep into the gutter, leaving a stink that lingers like death. Fuzzed-out and overdriven to the point of a shattered psyche, Fistula's sound is basically a polar opposite to the mental state they extol the virtues of. Music played low for getting high.
But it's not all slow though. Sure, they can glue our ass to the couch with a stoned-out riff but on the shorter tracks and the later half of “Pig Funeral” they absolutely destroy by taking that amplitory violence and busting out of the corner looking to take someone's head off. And no matter what speed, vocalist Dan Harrington's delivery is merciless.
Opener “Smoke Cat Hair and Toenails” defines sludge. It's not overachieving. It's honest. It strives for nothing more than to make the listener feel unclean beyond saving. Samples come into play throughout the album and it's here we first hear the oft-repeated “the drugs are more important than you” sample from the 1980 flick Don't Answer the Phone. It really sets the tone for the rest of the ride.
The shortest track, and the most acute trip is “Sobriety”. At 51 seconds Corey Bing (guitar), Sean Linehan (bass) and Nate Linehan (drums) lay down a visceral carpet bomb of aggression over which Harrington shreds his chords, including the killer line of “I wanna get fucked up today!”
By the time the album hits the title track we're subject to the continual pulse of a heaving riff shoving downward amid an abundance of samples. It's hypnotic and disorienting all at once. But that's the point.
Vermin is all about punishment and turning heads to mush. Dial up the volume and tone and just wait for their cabinets and your speakers to explode. Corrosive and addicting, Vermin plays it thick and sick. Whether getting low with doomy sludge or tweakin' hard with dirtcore rage, Fistula fill you full of an intoxicating essence for which the unrestrained portions of your mind will steal, swindle and kill for.
Get fucked up.