Haven't heard anything from these guys in years and figured that the band has dispersed, but here we've got a brand new Ep from Dad They Broke Me, one of the coolest-named bands in the Melbourne, Australian underground (and featuring members of the Japanese-based psych-metal outfit Birushana), back with more of their utterly evil no-wave sludge metal. Their self-titled album from several years ago was a sickening slab of noise-rock influenced sludge, equal parts Zeni Geva and Jesus Lizard and Eyehategod, and I recommended it highly. Now, they've dropped an even uglier slab of their low-end heaviness that has cranked up the noise and insanity tenfold, and it fucking rules; the only downside is that it's a little short, with just five tracks, but that's ok when the music is this unrelentingly crushing. Rot is a blast of sickening, bestial sludge, angular feedback-soaked riffs oozing from guitars that constantly sound like they are melting/malfunctioning, the sound part Am Rep pummeling, part Eyehategod diseased slow-mo hardcore sludge, a savage deathcrust beating soaked in endless feedback and noise, and the snarling vocals are so distorted that they become totally unintelligible, adding to the violent, feverish feel of the songs. Fucking awesome.

The band doesn't get mired in slow trudging heaviness, though. Starting with "Sutured", the band hurl themselves into a lurching, stop-n-go pummel, an epic riff smashing through clouds of droning feedback and psychedelic guitar noise, the sound ultra dense, a swirling mass of chaotic sound driven by a monstrous anti-groove. The twitching becomes more violent on "Swine Filth Hate God", all surging dissonant sludgefuck with winding bass lines and spastic drumming, bathed in smoldering sheets of amp noise and frantic, gibbering shrieks. "Respitory Collapse" focuses pounding glacial sludge into a Swans-like dirge, at first taking shape as a massive doom-laden groove, then building into pounding faster-paced chaos later on before shifting back into a sludgy riff collapsing beneath tons of feedback, fx, noise, and distortion, a crumbling, disintegrating wall of amp filth. Then it's on to the faster, spastic two-minute hardcore blast of "Slag" that breaks down into scraping, screeching noise, and ends with the final murderous frenzy of "Gutted Slowly", a mangled blast of grindcore at first, then freezing up into a petrified dirge, a slow industrialized drum crawl and droning two chord bass riff grinding under howling guitar noise, becoming a totally malevolent wall of doom that eventually collapses further into pure harsh noise before finally reconvening into a murderous sludge assault.

This is intense stuff, a punishing, noisy blast of pure negativity; too bad that this appears to be the band's last release, as their drummer is permanently relocating to Japan. Rot is a devastating final chapter, a fusion of brute noise rock force a la Unsane/Zeni Geva/Jesus Lizard at their heaviest and vile, violent sludgecore, and highly recommended for fans of extreme heaviness. The Ep has been released on both Cd and Lp, with the Cd version issued in a super-limited run of 150 copies packaged in an Arigato style case with minimal artwork, and the Lp version in a deluxe screen printed package.