Slughog

Grit! (Wonderdrug)
by Steve Tremain

Heavy? You better believe it, buster! Just try getting two bassists, a guitarist with attitude, and a drummer from Hell to sound light. Nope, uh-uh, nix, nada. Can’t be done. Slughog‘s Grit! thunders and rumbles along like some unholy juggernaut, like a shoggoth with a vengeance, like a 747 landing without wheels; lots of fire, buckets of sludge, and a destructive force powerful enough to crumple everything in its path. This album pulls the hairs from the nose of “alternative,” making it shriek and cry and jump up and down. I’m mostly drawn to the drums, a roaring river of beats, being both the piston and the grease, sliding everything along as he smashes his way through the songs. Not to say that the double bass attack doesn’t add its own lava to the proceedings. No, they shake and moan and splutter their way through Grit! and subject us to a low frequency assault capable of destroying a man’s internal organs from 50 feet. And what do we need as the arsenic icing for this Clorox cake? A guitar shrieking and wailing over it all, crunching down and ripping up, feedback and distortion laying waste to eardrums and stereos alike. Their songs are like mantras, a churning, repetitive travelogue through the wastelands. Like I said, they’re heavy.