Slugnut - All the Rot and Splendor

Genre rock Publisher Slugnut Records External Links Slugnut

Often, it's the metal bands who dare to push boundaries who get people excited, be it positively or negatively, polarizing metal fans, inciting impassioned arguments about how great or how full of crap a band's new disc is. For every listener of aggressive music who admires the daring of bands like Mastodon, In Flames, or Soilwork, there's another person who simply wishes Everything Sounds the Same. North Carolina's Slugnut are a band perfectly suited to the latter type of listener.

Not that that's a bad thing; after all, Motorhead continues to go strong after 30 years of recycling the same schtick. The thing is, with Slugnut, it's hard to separate them from the rest of the metal pack, but on their new self-released album, All the Splendor and Rot, you can sense they're on the verge of carving out their own niche, as the album, while a workmanlike 40 minutes of slightly simmering fury, achieves an impressive balance of disparate styles. On one hand, you have the American underground sounds of the legendary Melvins, sludge aces Eyehategod, the Southern-fried old school thrash of Corrosion of Conformity, and the blue-collar riffing of contemporary metalcore outfits like Hatebreed and Black Label Society. On the other, though, is an interesting European influence that incorporates the double-time rhythms of black metal (the opening riffs of "Livid" bring to mind Hellhammer and early Celtic Frost), not to mention some quality screaming by drummer/vocalist Jason Wheeler, who seems to find a middle ground between Cradle of Filth's Danni and Dimmu Borgir frontman Shagrath. As for the songs themselves, no one track leaps out at the listener (though the Sabbath-fused "Gut Feeling" is an impressive combination of stoner rock and hardcore), but the ones that work best are the ones that dare to sound more European than American.

For anyone who thinks that In Flames and Soilwork have sold out, that The Dillinger Escape Plan have become wusses, that Mastodon has gone too prog, All the Splendor and Rot is just the thing for you. It's a likeable enough album, and while monotony threatens to set in the more it wears on, there's a sense of a groundwork being laid for something better, and more original the next time around.