They’re from New Orleans, they play sludge, and they’re friends with Philip Anselmo, but they’re not EyeHateGod and they’re not Crowbar. Housecore Records upstarts haarp (properly written sans capitalization and with the double-A, much to the chagrin of Microsoft Word’s autocorrect function) make their full-length debut with The Filth, an aptly-titled hour of sludgy malevolence, more modernly metallic than the prior-mentioned Nola outfits, and capped off with brutal (again, in the metal sense) vocals courtesy of Shaun Emmons, who fronts the old-school single-guitar four-piece with a three-layer approach: high screams, mid-range gutteral bellows and low growls. Across The Filth’s nine tracks, he’s consistently a focal point, but there’s room left for the riffs of Grant Tom as well. It seems haarp are interested mostly in being as heavy and as loud as possible at all times.

That isn’t an approach I’m about to degrade. It works for haarp, and from the start of the album with “The Rise, the Fall” (companioned by closer, “The Fall, the Rise”), they prove they’re good at it. Doesn’t do much for dynamics, but haarp leave changing tempos to handle most of that, drummer Keith Sierra Jr. seeming to land no less heavily on his kit when playing slow or fast, and bassist Ryan Pomes opening The Filth highlight “A New Reign” with deeply metallic rumble. There are some flashes of melody in Tom’s guitar work on that track, and on the closer, but they’re mostly swallowed in the wall of noise brought out in the production, which makes the overall haarp sound engulfing. Scott Hull mastered The Filth and Housecore’s engineer-in-residence David “The Puma” Troia recorded with Anselmo himself credited as producer, so the band comes out of it sounding clear and full, though Emmons’ vocals are disproportionally high in the mix at times. A cut like nine-minute centerpiece “Peerless” dominates, but listening, I can hear the mute at the end of each rhythmic snippet of screaming, and it distracts me from the music surrounding.

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