One of my many nagging obsessions: the kind of crusty doom that oozed out of punk rock rather than heavy metal in the late 80s and early 90s.
Instead of born-too-late types like Saint Vitus, Trouble and Iron Man I mean that gnarly, squat-dwelling shit that was as at home sharing stages with death metal and grindcore bands as glue-huffing crusties: bands like Dystopia, Winter and Asbestosdeath who might’ve known their Sabbath lore but were also down with stuff like Rudimentary Peni, Deviated Instinct and Amebix.
Captured here, Mindrot’s first demo provides a perfect example with ten songs that are scummy, oily and largely devoid of hope, but also charged with a certain sense of grandeur. You can hear Sacrilege and early Neurosis in the mix as the band deploy dirty metallic riffs and lurking doom-outs, the murky horror occasionally offset by a delicate interlude or gloomy spoken word part. All this is then draped over a pessimistic punk rock mindset, which makes sense when you consider their links to the likes of Confrontation and Dystopia (one member was also in Save Ferris for a time, which requires slightly more of a stretch) and the flyers that show their name in the mix with everyone from Rorschach and Nausea to Bolt Thrower and The Voodoo Glow Skulls.
Later on the band would tip into more polished, haughty territory along the lines of Morgion and Asunder. I love that stuff too, but for me this is more viscerally satisfying and suits where my head is at right now: savage but well thought-out, and sounding genuinely sick in terms of mind, body and spirit.