DESTROY MY BRAINS

DESTROY MY BRAINS     “Wilt”

By Dr. Abner Mality

If you’re not getting enough daily negativity from the nightly news, this band from the barren plains of Alberta will finish you off for sure. This is some of the nastiest and most nihilistic sludge metal I have heard this year.

This is their fifth album and the titles of the previous offerings will give you a hint of what to expect here: “Worthless”, “InsignifiCan’t”, “Lifeless”, “Tormented”. Put that all together and it spells out “WILT”...the final album in a cycle of suicidal hopelessness. The music here is a sickening stew of CROWBAR, ELECTRIC WIZARD and GRIEF influences. But if there’s one band that DESTROY MY BRAINS really reminds me of, it’s England’s IRON MONKEY. It’s just a non-stop tidal wave of slow hate, capped off with an obnoxious vocal performance by Jarret, who pukes his guts out with the sneering negativity of a guy who’s ready to kill his family and then himself.

The thing is, there is enough variety in the riffing here to make it genuinely interesting. There is some actual songcraft going on, heard nowhere better than “Burn The Virgin”, which has such a spooky, fog-drenched mood, similar to ELECTRIC WIZARD’s “Let Us Prey” and “We Live” albums. The titanic title track is along similar lines…the hooks are oppressive but switch up just enough to avoid pure monotony, which many sludge bands fall victim to.

Nevertheless, this is a test of endurance, especially if you listen to it in its entirety. It will primarily appeal to people like DESTROY MY BRAINS themselves…mean, hopeless, with nowhere to go and a lot of time to get there.

DESTROY MY BRAINS