���Looking back at the lineup of that old Not Without A Fight compilation that we put out during the early days of Crucial Blast, Depressor was easily the heaviest band we had on there, their contribution "Flesh World War" bulldozing over the rest of the lineup like some mechanized meatgrinding monstrosity. It's been years since anything new from this somewhat mysterious Bay Area one-man band has turned up, the project seemingly gone into hibernation around the middle of the oughts, but Macedonian label Fuck Yoga has brought us this crushing new LP that combines some of Depressor's earliest recordings, 1995's Filth and 1997's Grace, originally released as a pair of home-dubbed tapes, remastered and released on vinyl for the first time ever.

���From the claustrophobic mechanized crust-crush of opener "F.I.L.T.H.", I'm reminded why I was so stoked to have this band on that old compilation. Combining brutal drum machines and monstrous down-tuned guitars with weird effects, guttural bellowing and seizure-inducing tempo changes, Depressor's sound bridged the industrialized dirge of early Pitchshifter, Skin Chamber and Streetcleaner-era Godflesh with the grimy gutter stench of stuff like Amebix, Deviated Instinct, Axegrinder and even Arise-era Sepultura; like Optimum Wound Profile, Depressor weren't timid about speeding the industrial crust up, injecting the blasts of fetid factory-floor doom with mangled mechanized thrash. Putrid synthesizers coil and buzz around the punishing mecha-sludge, while sour atonal guitar leads erupt from the droning, dirty riffage; Justin Broadrick's guitar style is a clear influence, but this stuff is more than just Godflesh worship, the songs welded to a tough death metal backbone of monstrous Bolt Thrower-sized riffage, and enhanced with eerie melodic touches, creepy electronic noises and a nastier vibe that makes 'em one of my favorite industrialized metal bands ever. Tracks like "Chunks" are warped machine-crust anthems that pulse with a rigid percussive power that at times almost seems to nudge it towards Wax Trax territory while never relenting on the filthy crustmetal aggression and apocalyptic vibe, while "Decimator / Fear Itself" is an utterly flattening chunk of fucked-up, slow motion death metal that slowly devolves into a whirring hiss-drenched dronescape.

��� Limited to four hundred copies.