��Although I've seen this band get tagged with that dumb "post-metal" descriptor more than once, don't let that fool you into thinking that Generation Of Vipers are just another in a long line of very heavy, very boring Isis rip-offs. Whatever that piece of rock critic shorthand might have actually meant at one time, it doesn't do anything to describe just how ugly and heavy this band actually is. I hadn't had a chance to check out any of their stuff before now, but when I finally stumbled across their music online, I was supremely stomped by their sludgy, slightly proggy heaviness. What the Knoxville, Tennessee based band Generation Of Vipers deliver on their third and latest album Howl And Filth is nothing more than a well-built fusion of classic sludgy Am Rep-style noise rock and the apocalyptic churn of Through Silver In Blood-era Neurosis. The band, which includes drummer B.J. Graves of US Christmas and A Storm Of Light, liberally laces their crushing war-sludge with atmospheric synthesizers and violins on Howl And Filth, letting the album batter the listener with lots of crushing, almost bomb-string level heaviness while they layer on sheets of corrosive electronic noise and those haunting chamber strings, the songs sometimes slipping into an almost industrialized heaviness that can really grind.

�� At first listen, Howl And Filth appears to be carved out the same apocalyptic, jagged ore as Neurosis and early Mastodon, forging a churning, often hypnotic sound from angular crushing riffs on the massive opener "Ritual", the sound filled with burly, howling vocals, powerful drumming that often locks into furious tribal rhythms, and lots of ebb and flow as the band shifts in and out of more subdued, slow-burning passages. These guys focus more on building that hypnotic undertow than many of their Neurosis-worshipping peers, though, and they do it well, with the circular crush of songs like that opening song expanding into even more punishing power as the metallic crunch is coiled ever tighter, until it finally springs into an even more devastating sludge riff. The band makes use of some tricky time signatures and interesting rhythms, combining that angular drum performance with lots of swirling blackened guitar melodies, but that churning heaviness is eventually broken with the appearance of the middle track "All Of This Is Mine". There, the band crafts a short piece of eerie, atmospheric chamber-gloom, opening with strands of ghostly violin and spidery piano notes that drift slowly through darkness, a quiet interlude opening up in the cracks between the heavier tracks. After that, "Eternal" unleashes another one of their monstrous metallic noise rock jams, with more of that ultra-heavy Amphetamine Reptile-fueled lurch welded to massive metallic crush, and the song "Slow Burn" smears discreet electronic noise and whirling spacey effects across it's own lumbering jagged groove. There's a nice burnt psychedelic touch to much of Howl And Filth, too, with squalls of brutal guitar feedback rising over the album like clouds of black smoke, and those howling amplifiers lead right in to closer "The Misery Coil", which drifts into a final realm of that scorched-earth psychedelia, where wailing ecstatic voices and distant violins drift overhead like carrion birds, before dropping into the album's final blast of crushing, apocalyptic sludge. It's a familiar sound, but Generation Of Vipers mine the heaviest aspects of it.

�� Comes in digipack packaging.