Fister

NO SPIRIT WITHIN LISTENABLE MISSOURI’S DOOM-LADEN MISERY MASTERS DROWN OUT THEIR SORROWS

No Spirit Within is the latest full-length from the band who gave the world the track Life Is Short, Life Is Shit, Soon It Will All End back in 2014. For a trio who have been scraping the bottom of the misery barrel since 2009, what’s most surprising, beyond the absence of a suicide pact that should have logically dissolved Fister years ago, is how non-threatening large swathes of their fourth album sound. From the off, Frozen Scythe slinks toward major chord territory backed by a rhythm pattern that’s more drum line than firing line, while Cazador mesmerises with Torche-like bomb-string blasts before twisting towards punk-ish Celtic Frost riffing. Plenty of wrist-slittin’, cop-kickin’ moments comprise the album

– I Am Kuru’s tape loop weirdness could be a Charles Manson jail cell experiment – but too much cantankerousness has been deleteriously supplanted by expansive psychedelia and an uneasy consonance.

FOR FANS OF: PRIMITIVE MAN, CONAN, HOODED MENACE