American Heritage / Foe / Art Of Burning Water - The Combined Stupidity Of Spiteful Men

Label: House Of Stairs
Year: 2003

Fair warning, this one is orbiting in a metal adjacency that could credibly be called "straight up metal", and it would be hard to argue. Or at least pointless to argue (more so than you average argument about music...which is already pretty fucking tedious to begin with). So, armed with that knowledge, plan the rest of you day accordingly.
American Heritage, who we have posted before, come out of the gates with a knotted, mathy take on big, lumbering Mastodon styled unrelenting pounding. If you put your ear to the seashell you can hear some Craw/Keelhaul, some KEN Mode, some Neurosis, and some Knut. Essentially a beefier take on the early Hydra Head roster, and with added pinch harmonics. Burly.
Foe, who we have not posted before, keep us rolling with a single hefty ten minute slab of riff sausage. Chunky riffs, angular riffs, grooving riffs, serpentine riffs....all the riffs. All Frankenstein'd together into an instrumental ramble that drags you, pushes you, and taunts you. It shifts so frequently that you can't get bored, but I do wish that they maybe edited it into two or three separate tracks, and let the really good parts settle down for a minute and breathe before being jettisoned for the inevitable next riff.
Art Of Burning Water, who we have posted before, and who should be noted are veterans of the split release format (not Agathocles level, but at least nine in a sixteen record discography), bring it back to a more economical mathy punishment. Not at all unlike American Heritage, but more streamlined. Still an ugly proposition that sways violently before falling backwards off their bar stool, and taking swings at random guests as security drags them out the door and unceremoniously tosses them into a profanity riddled headlong heap on the sidewalk. They will ask you for a lift back to their apartment, but don't do it. They will extinguish a cigarette in your cloth seat (even though you told them at least three times not to smoke in your car) in order clear the way for a hot spray of Mr. Boston's induced vomit across the entirety of your dashboard. I'm telling you. Every time.

DL