Meth Drinker – Meth Drinker

Written on

June 25, 2011

Have you ever put a record on and thought to yourself, “Since when did people inside insane asylums get to use instruments and why does it sound so fucking great?”. If you have thought that, believe me when I say you are not alone in this because when I listen to Meth Drinker’s self-titled debut full-length “Meth Drinker”, I get the same exact thoughts. Stampeding out of New Zealand like a hoard of buffalo, Meth Drinker just recently got together last year and have already put out a solid, boy do I mean solid, record that will blow everything you love out of the water. A release that was brought to my attention by Miss Sarah herself, it’s a good thing she showed me this because my jaw hit the floor after I heard a couple songs. Think of it this way, if “Meth Drinker” had black magical spells, your whole record collection would be melted in a matter of seconds.

Villages filled with the craziest of humans, the type of humans that kill and eat raw flesh for the hell of it. Straight jackets, rooms filled with the stench of vomit while the people that work at the hospital just walk right through it. Crucifixes that get flipped upside down while the lightning strikes the trees to cause a power outage. Images of souls being tortured while they’re strapped on surgery beds with nothing to look forward too. All of these images and atmospheres are really what set this record apart from so many other doom/sludge releases. It could be the samples that are played on certain tracks but just the overall vibe you get from “Meth Drinker” are straight out of a haunted insane asylum. As the bass will shake your glass of water, the drums fill in very nicely with it’s mid-paced tempo. The grooves and riffs are just the right pace too, they aren’t super slow so that the not so average listen will get bored but they aren’t so upbeat that the normal doom lover will get turned off.

“Combat Shock”, the fourth track on the record, starts off with a woman wondering about how her family is going to survive without her son, from what I gathered, having no job or life. She goes on to slip shit on him and you get the feeling once the sample cuts out that nothing good became of that situation. Murder? Suicide? Mass Murder? We can only imagine what happens after that sample because the way that the rest of the track takes you over, you sort of get the feeling that both of those bodies are laying somewhere face down, possibly in a sewer underneath the city. As simple as this record is, the way it comes out and makes you feel like you’re sort of part of this world that never existed, it makes you want to listen and pay attention. Speaking of greatness, besides the name of the band, you get these little samples of 70’s disco, at the end of “Combat Shock”, and a great country sample that seems to be from the 60’s at the end of the track “Broken Down and Used Up”. Crazy things cross through your mind while you listen to this record, the thought of actually rocking back and forth seemed to cross my mind quite a bit. “Meth Drinker” just makes you wanna do things that no other record can do, at least for me.

It’s all about the atmosphere on this debut record from Meth Drinker and if they keep putting records out like this insane piece of shit, we may have some guys that could crush the doom/sludge scene with their bare palms. Call me crazy, call me an idiot, you could even call me a worthless piece of shit for digging a band called Meth Drinker, all I know is that this record has impacted me and it will be in that discussion when Sarah and I talk about 2011’s top records.

Download the record here.
