Miami’s Consular must hail from the swampiest sections of the Everglades, for their molasses-slinging hurricane of sludge begins with the typical scavenging of spare chords from Grief, Eyehategod, Iron Monkey, and the like. But this four-piece stops there, adding instead more melody without detracting from the sheer density of their sound. Their debut Don’t Cross the Swine is a six-song introduction into Consular’s doom mysteries.

After a brief, (old) Earth intro, wittily titled “Introduction,” Consular plow into the first true track, “Snakeater,” in which the bass chords oscillate like slo-mo pendulums that double as guillotines poised directly over your jugular. The tune picks up halfway through like the Melvins covering Cavity, revealing the dirt-caked production that complements this subgenre perfectly. Each track bleeds into the next, and “Open Your Mouth” waltzes in on a carpet of lingering, almost tangible fuzz from guitarist Andrew Santa Lucia and bassist Jon Suarez. When drummer Angelo Santa Lucia starts pounding the skins and vocalist Matthew Cleer opens his trap to spew out the most wickedly throat-annihilating howls in the vein of Eyehategod’s Mike Williams, then you know that Consular are dead serious. The same hate-perspiring catharsis comes with “Torn Face,” and this cut is the most EHG-based thus far: unrelentingly swampy chords that exude an extremely filthy bravura.

“Prisoner” is uplifting in comparison to the rest, with flapping drumheads, broken amp speakers, and tinges of Santa Lucia’s guitar yearning to step out into the solo spotlight. Possibly a reference to the socioeconomic dichotomy of their hometown, the definitive “Living in the Land of the Blind” slaughters an ancient mastodon purely in the name of suffering, with an outro of Cleer’s anguished yelps as if in the final throes of death. While other sludge bands go through the motions of keeping it real, Consular continue their mission of proselytizing to the damned and downtrodden.

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