Band:	Vile Creature
Album:	Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm!
Style:	Sludge metal
Release date:	June 2020

01. Harbinger Of Nothing
02. When The Path Is Unclear
03. You Who Has Never Slept
04. Glory! Glory!
05. Apathy Took Helm!

I like my sludge to check a couple of marks:

1) bass;
2) be crushing;
3) be grandiose;
4) have an evocative cover art;
5) bass;
6) kindly remind me to flip to side B once side A is over even if I am digitally listening to the promo.

Vile Creature's Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! checks all of those.

Did I mention bass?

I discovered Vile Creature, among other things like the Her Patroonat queues, at Roadburn. I first came upon their name here on Metal Storm, but I didn't get the chance to listen to them just yet. Through the huge crowd in a small church I could see two people making some damn heavy noise, which is always a good thing to see. Next came the "the only language that hate speaks is violence" speech that transformed Vile Creature from a good sludge duo, to something that I really needed to keep my eye on. I mean, let's get this out of the way, Vile Creature is a queer anti-capitalist band, but you can pretty much listen to Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! and appreciate it as an absolutely amazing album even without taking that into consideration. But you're probably missing out on what "apathy" they're referring to.

Though Roadburn 2020 didn't take place and we're likely to have to wait another year for the collaboration with Bismuth, Glory, Glory! Apathy Took Helm! feels like such an achievement and a culmination of Vile Creature's career that I'm wondering how anything they'll make after this will possibly improve on what's already there. This isn't just a crushing sludge album, this is an album that taps into a glory and grandiosity and emotion that you rarely see crushing sludge albums tap into. A lot of that feeling comes from the later half of the album through the choral voices, courtesy of Laurel Minnes, first with a long moment on their own, and then beautifully integrated along the distorted doom.

Also did I mention the bass? Well, don't credit me on this one, but I only saw guitars and drums being credited on the album, however at times this really feels like a bass and drums (in this order, otherwise you'd think it's a Pendulum record) instead. The distortion is so bassy that there's no way you're going to convince that that guitar isn't a bass. And that makes GG!ATH! not only immensely crushing, but also damn groovy. This isn't really a combination that should work considering how somber and gloomy the album feels, but the grooviness doesn't really detract from that. So if that actually isn't bass, being able to replicate it so successfully is bad news for bass players worldwide.

And when I say that the album is crushing, I mean it. Apart from the grandiosity and the groove that I already spoke about, tracks like "Harbringer Of Nothing", who you should already know from this, really feed into that amplifier worship and tortured shrieks that all sludge music desperately tries to achieve. Even in its cleanest and most synth-heavy atmospheric moments, it still feels truly suffocating and overwhelming. And in all that swims a lot of emotion.

And as much as this is clearly Vile Creature's peak so far, I really hope those are gummy worms instead of the real thing.