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Sollubi Go to War, Bring Wizard Just in Case

The Wizard goes to war.Fact: if Sollubi are at war with it, I’m on their side. Even if it’s an intangible concept. I’d advise anyone who didn’t want to get their skull crushed under the force of high-grade disaffected sludge to align his or herself accordingly, sollubilogobecause the Pennsylvania/Ohio four-piece belch a 50+ minute, three song hatefest on their full-length debut, At War with Decency (Choking Hazard Records). Stark, drugged and clearly suffering some level of emotional trauma, Sollubi craft songs that, while long, retain their root anger, rather than lose their edge by making some lame attempt at being epic. Combined Eyehategod and Yob? Maybe, if the latter were less cosmic and the former much, much slower.

More than a darkened atmosphere, that on At War with Decency is dirty. Dirty and tired, and the music is an exhausted collapse after some epic relationship-killing argument. Emotionally unfulfilled. Pissed the fuck off. You hear it right away with guitarist Griff‘s frantic work on “In Violation,” which opens the record and is both the fastest and shortest track at 4:34. If “sludge” hadn’t been chosen to describe this kind of music, I’d cast my vote for “grime.” It sounds like there’s a film on my speakers, like grease-covered windows.

The 20:09 of “The White Witch” is devoted to classic sludge misanthropy, misogyny and misunderstanding. “The white witch, she takes hold/She says, ‘Watch all the damage that my pussy can do/It’s like a neutron bomb.'” I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that whichever lady in his life vocalist/programmer Jesse is yelling about would be none too pleased if she saw that, but at the same time, I doubt it’s much of a concern. If someone inspires lyrics with this kind of resentment in them, by then you don’t give a fuck what they think either way.

A long instrumental section that gives way to noise, feedback (and is that an echoplex I hear?) and more noise sets the stage for the coordinating intro section of the final/title track, which for its first 11 minutes sounds like Sleep played at half speed. Drummer Corey Bing (Fistula, Ultralord, Scumchrist, etc.) sits back into the droning and rides it out with minimalist thickness from bassist Wizard (King Travolta, Ultralord, etc.) until the vocals come in with their overriding message of hopelessness and the inevitability of failure. “Never/Give up/You lose.” Some days it really feels as simple as that.

The heaviness of At War with Decency is as much emotional as it is sonic. As pummeling as the huge riff at 18:35 on the closer is, lines like “Keep on believing that you’re something when you are nobody” are just as much responsible for giving the album its venom. And it is venomous — the kind of record that sits as uneasily in the stomach as all that beer you drank alone the night before. The kind of record they play for people on suicide watch when they need room in the ward. The kind of record that earns its pencil-drawing artwork. Nasty. Sludge.

Sollubi on MySpace

Choking Hazard Records

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