Fistula – Vermin Prolificus (Review)

Fistula are from the US and play Sludge Metal. This is their sixth album.

Oh Mother Sludge! You have such sights to show us don’t you? Fistula are firm adherents to the cause and push Mother Sludge’s agenda as if their lives depended on it. And maybe they do, as Mother Sludge is fickle with her favours.

Fistula are a very prolific, (heh), band and it’s always a pleasure to hear Sludge played with passion and feeling like we have here. Sludge is such a rich sub-genre of Metal that it’s easy to make it your own but it’s also easy to fall by the wayside into sloppy Eyehategod worship.

Of course, all Sludge bands by the very nature of the style have some Eyehategod in their sound; as this is the basic template of Sludge what matters is what the band does with it. Do they follow the template strictly or do they make it their own?

Fistula have embraced their fuzz-soaked, feedback-drenched Southern roots but like all great purveyors of the style they have mutated and warped it to their own vicious desires. As such, Vermin Prolificus is an album that bears the weight of history on its hulking shoulders without even noticing it’s even there and the resulting noise-fest is a grim testimony to the love of all things filthy, dirty and downright heavy.

On Vermin Prolificus the band leave no fungus-covered stone unturned in their quest to uncover all of Mother Sludge’s mysteries. Slow, fast, heavy, ever-so-slightly-less-heavy…the band play it all with relish and pull all of it off very well indeed.

The songs have the instant appeal of a rotten landscape and the hidden depths of a foetid swamp. This is music to get buried in.

I love this kind of album especially when delivered by the desperate hands of true believers like Fistula. If you have even a passing interest in the Sludge style then this is a must.

Get down, get dirty and get Fistula.