Dream Squasher＜Custom Tri-Color Merge with Splatter Vinyl＞

Feet planted firmly at the nexus of doomy sludge metal and hardcore-blasted noise rock, the veteran Los Angelites deliver another black eye of a record with Dream Squasher, their eighth full-length effort and the follow-up to 2016s equally punishing Lifespan of a Moth. The departure of co-founder and lead vocalist Cris Jerue, who left the group ahead of the albums release but appears sporadically throughout, hasnt dampened 16s abrasive sound and nihilistic spirit. Guitarist Bobby Ferry, also a founding member, takes over vocal duties and proves hes more than capable of matching Jerues tonsil-tearing delivery, but its his occasional detours into clean-ish singing that mark the most significant change for the band, as least dynamically. Commencing with the strident Candy in Spanish and the groove-laden Me and the Dog Die Together, Dream Squasher treads familiar sonic ground early on. The arrival of the slow-burning Sadlands, a bluesy Sabbath-esque dirge replete with fat 70s organ textures, sees Ferry adopt a doomy croon that feels more aligned with melody-forward noisemakers like the Sword and Mastodon than it does the sharp-edged crust punk of Eyehategod. The bruising Acid Tongue and Agora (Killed by a Mountain Lion) follow suit, pairing lumbering beats and tornadic guitars with Ferrys medium-grit sandpaper wails. Elsewhere, the blazing Ride the Waves looks to classic SoCal punk for inspiration, while the nightmarish Harvester of Fabrication and the fractured Screw Unto Others distill the bands multiple decades of sonic malevolence into bitter three-minute chunks of ruthless causticity. ~ James Christopher Monger