Man oh man, this some heavy shit.

Sitting squarely in the middle of the sludge genre, California’s Armed For Apocalypse, (featuring Cayle Hunter of Will Haven and The Abominable Iron Sloth) cull heavily from Crowbar and the expected gamut of down tempo, earthy, lumbering sludge bands like The Abominable Iron Sloth (duh), Blessing the Hogs, Blutch, Beaten Back to Pure, Black Cobra and such, but rather than a backbone of swampy, whiskey driven stupor, Armed For Apocalypse add a truly menacing sense of dread and almost death/doom metal heft and foreboding to their sound.

No surly, slurring interludes, just sheer punishing heft delivered with cavernous guitars and vocals that range from pained screams to demonic death metal roars and bellows. Alternating between caustic, up tempo riffs and some truly monolithic rumbling segments, Defeat is a merciless, beat-down, landslide of a record. From the cataclysmic climax of opener “We Fell From The Bottom”, monstrous lurch of “The Demon Who Makes Trophies Of Men”, utter rumble fest that opens “Fists of God”, as well as the more obviously Crowbar inspired and southern tinged “Hero Complex” and “A Collapse” to the Defeat is just downright nasty heavy, with the start and finish penultimate track “You Are Alive When they Start to Eat You” being the devastating epoch. The album closes out with a fittingly beefed up cover of Down’s “Temptations Wings” from the seminal NOLA album.

I kept trying to flesh this review out, but the fact is, this is about as a direct, no nonsense assault on your ears as there is, and thusly no real need to try and doctor this review up. Buy it, crank it up, and watch CNN report more earthquakes in your area.

[Visit the band's website]

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