Take As Needed For Pain cover

Take As Needed For Pain

Released

This New Orleans band combined distorted doom riffs, a seeming addiction to feedback (among other things), and a hostile, misanthropic worldview into a uniquely unsettling brand of sludge metal. This, their second album, is commonly regarded as an early peak, if not their masterpiece; frontman Mike Williams’ vocals are completely indecipherable, Jimmy Bower and Brian Patton’s guitars shamble forward as Mark Schultz’s bass and Joe LaCaze’s drums wallow in the swamp. Every once in a while, they manage to click together and create a surprisingly potent groove, but more often than not this is somewhere between the Black Sabbath of “Hand of Doom” and the Black Flag of “Three Nights” or “Scream.”

Phil Freeman

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