One of the ugliest albums in this week's batch, I've just gotten the Southern Lord reissue of And So Our Troubles Began back in stock along with the original vinyl release. It wasn't until Southern Lord put that out that I got a chance to check the band out, but I was immediately floored by the gruesome din that these Irish tarpit-thugs unleash on this album. At first I was expecting it to be some sort of sludgecore, the kind of stuff that Southern Lord is usually known for, but that's just one part of Drainland's sound; the other parts are made up of punishing Am Rep-style noise rock of the most violent kind, and straight up hardcore, and it all comes together for one glorious, pulverizing mass of sonic hate.

The first six songs are all from the original 12" And So Our Troubles Began, starting with the drunken lurch of "Jellyfish" before tearing into fast, dissonant thrash, going back and forth between the two like a kind of grimy, atonal mix of noise rock and crusty hardcore, and then drops into a crushing sludgey groove that's laced with some killer noisy air-raid guitar work. The vicious hardcore on "Limb Template" is torn out of more sludgy grinding heaviness, moving into blast beat fury and angular skronk, with some seriously massive riffs that are both down tuned, super-heavy and really dissonant and hideous, a super-heavy sludgy noise rock assault. They mix it up with some hateful power electronics-style feedback abuse and vocal horror on the track "The Scouring Process", and follow it with the slow grueling churn of "Somnial Hex" and more lurching hardcore on "I Am Larry Clark". Throughout all of this, Drainland batters their grinding, lurching heaviness with gusts of corrosive wah-pedal noise and mangled bass-heavy riffs, and allow the songs to sometimes decay nto dying bass grunts and swarming electronic noise.

The Cd version that Southern Lord released earlier this year also features two additional bonus tracks that had originally appeared on a split 10" with Grinding Halt, and is machine numbered and limited to one thousand copies. The vinyl version only has the first six tracks.