Album Review: Slug Guts - Playin’ In Time With The Deadbeat

Opening track Scum sums Playin' In Time With The Deadbeat, the third longplayer from Brisbane's purveyors of Gothic nihilism Slug Guts, up perfectly. Three minutes of claustrophobic instrumentation (including a heady saxophone that emulates the vocals, an aural equivalent of the gnashing of teeth), Scum breeds darkness, desperation and despair, kicking and screaming in the cesspit of oblivion. It's heavy stuff, mirroring the debauchery and disdain that the band sweat from their pores, and it's a damaged masterpiece that's hard to come back from.

Yet somehow they do. Old Black Sweats oozes forth like a diseased blues ramble, threatening to infect everything it touches. The vehement rants on Suckin' Down echoes out from an abandoned well, the drums pummelling them further down into the hole. The cavernous production amplifies the anguish and horror, whether it's the empty warehouse grind of Order Of Death, the gross bluster inherent in Adult Living or the title track's feverish swagger. You can hear the ghosts of The Birthday Party and Venom P Stinger in the band's aesthetic, bashing their skulls in both agony and ecstasy. Yet there are tangential slivers of intent, as the almost pop tempo of Stranglin' You Too and the carnival grotesquery of Glory Holes attests. These boys may be in pain, but they revel in it.

Slug Guts are demons of filth and lords of wanton aggression, and Playin' In Time… is their most consistent document of their riotous yet wilful decline. This won't be everyone's elixir, but for those ready to roll up the sleeves and dive into the filth, there's not much more disturbingly rapturous than this.