I’m not a big fan of the term “supergroup,” but I’ll be the first to admit that’s a hypocritical asshole statement because it’s not the first time I’ve used it in a review.  The Disease Concept though is one of the few bands to actually earn the dubbing.  This is practically a who’s who of the heavy doom/sludge underbelly.  You’ve got the furious twin axe licks of Dave Szulkin (Blood Farmers) and Tommy Southard (Godspeed, Solace), Corey Bing beats the skin off the drums (he of every deathsquad from Fistula to Morbid Wizard to Accept Death), Rob Hultz brings the brown notes (Godspeed, Solace, Trouble, ex-Lethal Aggression) and unabombin’ madman Jesse Kling dissects his vocal chords for science class (Morbid Wizard, ex-Sollubi, ex-Pennsylvania Connection).  Scott Stearns of Shifty Records’ cover art fame handled the illustrations, and Chris Griffith penned these tales of American sleaze (Griff was also part of Sollubi, PA Connection and Rape-X).  If I continued to fill in every members’ resume this review wouldn’t happen.  There’s so much band crossbreeding the reproduction rate is just simply out of control.

The shit-fed, urine weaned sounds of the band’s sophomore LP, Your Destroyer, now available on cd, is about as nihilistically nuked as burnt out doom metal gets.  This is hardly your grandpappy’s sludge album with TDC bivouacking elements from thrash, crust and a variety of other ill-tempered genres.  They laugh in the face of tempo changes, relish lyrics that are so dissociated they in themselves need therapy and could give a shit less about being some straight up “doom” band.  Their singular mission is your violation.  The statement is clear unless your ears are clogged with last week’s lice.

Introductory cut, “Life is Shit” teaches a lesson in lead poisoning via an opening doom dirge that’s so thick in tonnage your receptors will be piston pressed into sheet metal.  This is the equivalent of audio porn that elicits more money shots than a 1,000 buck hooker.  The rampant spunk ejaculates itself into a chugging, squathouse Slayer riff with great interplay flowing throughout the dual guitar deviance.  Bing thrashes it up beneath the mind molesting riffs as Hultz’s low-end is swallowed down into Charlie Mason’s prophesized, “hole in the earth.”  For the chorus (if you can call it that) Kling’s eviscerated voice is evil to fault as his words slither from his chords repeating the track’s title over acidic sludge/doom.  The expansive guitar solos in the second half are cream of the cum crop.  I’m not sure who takes the first…it sounds like Dave starts it off, and Tommy finishes, but I’m not quite sure.  What I do know is they join together for a moment of Robo/Downey twin guitar glory that would make Thin Lizzy blush, while Bing lays into a snare fill that breaks more bones than the 7 or so car wrecks I’ve been in.  That’s honest pastor!

“Living at Home and Hiding from the Government” not only sports a title that’s very indicative of my lifestyle, but also produces the exact kind of sludgy doom I’d donate an organ for.  Eyehategod actually seems pretty tame by comparison as twin southern riffs crawl like roaches into the germy recesses of Hultz’s distorted, desolation bass bunker.  Jesse spits teeth, blood and bad attitude as Bing keeps the pace under control initially.  Honestly, Corey is a highlight on the skins here, and although I love his sloppy, hog trough pounding in other acts, he’s fucking tight and flashy when unleashed in this band.  Case and point, the 2:11 mark where he goes into a rollicking snare battery that trips a mental breakdown of bong burnt, 70s/early 80s Priest/Trouble oriented riff n’ roll.  Szulkin and Southard prove the men to beat when it comes to dizzying, head severing axe trade-offs; they start in unison on a classy, battle-hardened harmony and then solo licks start spitting oil in your face at the height of their unstoppable locomotion.  First time I heard this song, I had to put it on repeat a few times before I could even attempt to finish listening to the album.  It’ll throw a nun outfit on you, lock you up in the stocks and deliver a voracious ravaging.  Lube not included.

You can smell the burnt rubber and the diesel on the strictly hit n’ run offense of, “High on Amphetamines and Love (But Mostly Amphetamines).”  The whip of punk tenderizes your back, Lemmy kicks your teeth in while you’re down and the Shifty Records’ heyday is sitting in the back of the room watching, and laughing at your humiliation.  Solos are smeared across your cuts and bruises like a toxic salve that doesn’t cure anything at all, and there’s no drop down into the doom-y stuff.  They dam the bombast with the alligator annihilation rock of “You’re Doing it Wrong.”  Sodden swamp riffs have cool little lead guitar extensions on ‘em, and the rhythm section remains stuck in a churning pit of stop/start quicksand.  I think Tommy steps up for the first lead riff, it sounds like a Solace groove run through a woodchipper, as Dave comes in to pick up the pieces in hard-rock squalor of blues notes so bent they break like Satan’s peanut brittle.  That’s got to be Szulkin on the solo too…it writhes, winds, twists and turns like a Blood Farmers’ shredder only the delivery is more straight metallic.  The lyrics are the kinda shit your parents warned you to stay away from, but you were just too young and dumb to listen.  Heroin is a helluva drug from this short snippet, “It’s only abuse if you’re doing it wrong, he slowly killed himself one bag at a time.”

Shooting out the lights with a Colt .45 while swilling one with the other hand, “Razorface,” has the kind of riffs that were raised with all of the love of a dead beat dad.  Outright southern-ism jism is saved for the song’s swinging, 4/4 culmination but most of these grooves sound like a slightly Sabbath-y Noothgrush chugging out a militantly doom-y malaise that’s mutinously back stabbed by off-kilter, staccato thrash picking and bluesy lead guitar polish.  If you’re adverse to pain, you better run.  Releasing you from your misery the awesome, “Bad Friends and Dead Credit” is a rising tide of soaring blues that wipes the scurvy off your lips with a harmonized boogie, and while the music is kickin’ enough that you could imagine Ronnie Van Zant or Phil Lynott grabbing the mic, Kling handles the narration with vocals so grimy he makes G.G. Allin look like a suit wearing accountant.  Solos light up the sky like warheads on the 4^th of July, and the whole affair echoes with touching bits of sadness from the cream of the 70s southern rock crop.  They save some of the same whiskey pukin’, dual guitar pyrotechnics for closer “Super Clam’s” big top finale yet stretch their wings with a lava lamp lucidity glistening with acoustic instrumentation and somber jamming that’s a whole ‘nother can of mutant worms when stacked side by side against the rest of the album.  The band’s unrelentingly hostile take on the genre is actually washed clean by such an endnote.  In my opinion the respite is welcome.  After hopping around on coke, clonapin and Adderall for the last half hour it was like a soothing massage to my blitzed cerebellum.

As good as TDC’s debut Liquor Bottles and Broken Steel was, Your Destroyer is in a completely different league than its predecessor.  You can’t fuck with this album.  Go ahead and try if you want; don your brass knuckles, slip that switchblade in your back pocket and put up your riot shield.  I won’t doubt that you might put up a decent fight, but you’re gonna lose.  Flesh and bone ain’t no match for a LSD loaded Sherman Tank.  This is certainly worth your hard earned dollar.

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