Feels weird that this is Iron Lung’s first new LP in over ten years, right? Still, the wait has definitely been worth it, with the band managing to refine, hone and push the boundaries of what they do while at the same time hew to a sense of unassailable power violence classicism.
Adhering to the short // fast // loud template the band viciously pummel and grind, melding the brain-rupturing rage of Crossed Out with the laboured heavy-breathing of early Swans. While they’ve always been a precision act, there’s even less bleed at the edges than on previous releases: the tourniquets have been tied off tighter and the tubes that push liquids in and out inserted more smoothly before being sealed off in a gleaming, well-scrubbed, antiseptic environment. In terms of thematics, it definitely feels like real life has caught up with the duo’s disease-as-metaphor outlook, the band probing the raw, weeping edges of their country’s poisoned relationship with healthcare and the mental, physical and psychic fallout of a global pandemic.
On both a gut and cerebral level absolutely everything has been designed with specific intent: to haul you bodily over the white-hot coals of bitter experience, and splay before you the full shittiness of human existence. Whether they’re delivering a lunging, reptile-brain bodyblow or something cannier like the song-within-a-song structure of ‘Purgatory Dust,’ ‘Virus’ and ‘Purgatory Dust (Finale)’ it all speaks to one incontrovertible fact: Iron Lung remain the best at what they do.