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Slugdge – Esoteric Malacology Review

Although it’s easy to view Slugdge ’s trippy slug tales in all their tongue-in-cheek glory, the band appear to put a hell of a lot of thought and zany ideas into their narratives. A fascinating recent interview with the duo also revealed a darker underbelly to the band, including a history of mental health issues and a long journey built on hard work and persistence before Matt Moss and Kev Pearson finally began earning well deserved support and recognition as their shared talents and chemistry birthed the unique and always evolving Slugdge sound. Esoteric Malacology continues Slugdge ’s impeccable track record and is a marvelous example of the remarkable compositional skills and songwriting smarts of its creators. Slugdge continue refining and mutating their gritty blend of death, prog, tech, and doom with blackened and thrashy touches and soaring melody, expertly spinning the disparate elements into knotty, dense compositions with epic hooks and razor-sharp execution. “War Squids” opens the album in potent style, sounding positively upbeat and infectious as lively double bass and zany prog-death riffs feature prominently across the song’s jagged, multi-faceted landscape.

Esoteric Malacology feels like the band’s most adventurous, complex and progressive album yet, a supreme showcase of their advancing technical prowess and unmatched ability to boggle minds and penetrate brainwaves with rousing hooks, such as the earworm specials featured on “Slave Goo World” and the colossal progressive death of “The Spectral Burrows.” Death metal remains at the heart of Esoteric Malacology but such diverse ground is covered musically that the album transcends straightforward genre pigeon-holing. The dueling guitar work is a massive strength, exploring varied terrain. Eerie harmonies lend the album a strange atmospheric vibe, uneasy melodies soar through the chaos, while the album comes packed with a ridiculous amount of technical skill, ripping solos and penetratingly catchy death riffs and prog oddities. “Putrid Fairytale” features a bit of everything in the Slugdge repertoire, its angular, prog-tinged riffs offset by potent blast beats, viscous mid-paced grooves, booming vocal melodies and killer shreddage. On the album’s penultimate track, Slugdge open the melodic and progressive gateways in spectacular fashion on the doomy, psychedelic and riff-laden slow build of the epic “Salt Thrower.”

Esoteric Malacology is a brutal, malevolent, brilliant and deliciously warped addition to an increasingly stellar body of work. Yet despite spending substantial time with the album, I feel like there is so much more to discover, a scary proposition considering the high regard I already hold the album in. Slugdge ’s continual evolution is nothing short of astounding and in my humble opinion, they have elevated themselves to the elite in the modern metal scene. Esoteric Malacology is essential listening and perhaps their finest work to date. So jump on the bandwagon and praise Mollusca motherfuckers!

Rating: 4.0/5.0 DR: 8 | Format Reviewed: 192 kbps mp3 Label: Willowtip Records Websites: slugdge.bandcamp.com | facebook.com/slugdge Releases Worldwide: March 2nd, 2018

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Lovecraft and slime: Slugdge are your new favourite band

Two guys making a filthy, sticky racket just for the fun of it

Chorley, a satellite town of the city of Preston, Lancashire. It rains, a lot. For denizens of dank places, like slugs, it’s perfectly grim. So here, under plant pots, rockeries and, inexplicably, your kitchen floor at night time, lurk the acolytes of Mollusca, an infernal cosmic slug deity, awaiting his return from the gardens of Slish, that he might smite all those that hath poured salt upon his children.

So sayeth Slugdge, a duo of bedroom musicians that have caused a stir in metal’s underground. Their third release, Dim And Slimeridden Kingdoms , has taken their coagulated mire of death, grind and prog to new levels, blending Lovecraftian malice with suppurating melody, riffs galore and such ferocious blast fuckery that what at first seems like a joke soon becomes serious. Slugdge are the real deal. For members Matt Moss and Kev Pearson it’s come as of much surprise to them that two DIY musicians have made such waves, receiving praise on high from reputable metal webzines Stereogum and Invisible Oranges amongst others, and for the past two years, making Metalsucks’ best of year lists.

So who are they, and where the hell did the idea for slug metal come from? ‘We’re a bedroom band that got lucky,’ shrugs Matt, unassumingly. ‘Kev and I were sat up one night having a weird conversation about slugs. I don’t know how it started, but the result was us making the song Eyehatesalt , obviously a nod to (legendary New Orleans sludge band) Eyehategod. It wasn’t meant to go any further, but it quickly became our new musical vehicle, mostly because it was fun and didn’t feel like a chore.’

Veterans of several acts in an active local scene, they’d grown disillusioned. ‘We’d always end up writing about trite subjects. On the surface the slug thing seems gimmicky, but no more than writing about war, Satan, or animal cruelty; although we’ve probably changed the way people treat slugs, nobody else was fighting their corner!’

But surely, beyond the obvious Lovecraftian connotations (Matt: ‘He’s my favourite author, xenophobia aside’), there’s something deeper at work. ‘Of course’, asserts Matt. ‘It’s about the things I’ve struggled with personally. I don’t tend to go into specifics – people can draw whatever conclusion they like.’

How can two blokes in a bedroom make a racket so glorious that it sounds like Mastodon, Napalm Death and Carcass drowning in purulent ooze? ‘We just sit there and play around until it happens’ says Matt, self-deprecatingly. ‘We try everything; we’re not afraid of rejection. If something doesn’t work we get rid. Sometimes we grow to dislike bits after we’ve released an album, but it’s too late then!’

Kev and Matt’s relationship is one of those rare instances of creative synergy. ‘We have to work together,’ insists Matt. ‘We’re both essential to the makeup. I’ve never understood bands cycling through members. It clearly works for some, not us.’

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The Lennon and McCartney of mollusc metal they might be, but unfortunately it’s unlikely they’ll ever make it big in America, or anywhere else – touring, signing to a label is apparently out of the question. “We’ve had offers of assistance, but that generally involves deadlines, and I don’t work well under those. I have a type of psychosis which has meant I’ve had massive issues being out in society,” says Matt, frankly, “but I channel it. I prefer thinking like a shaman rather than a maniac. Eccentricity is harmless, madness is harmful; I do everything I can to avoid falling back into madness.”

It’s brave to be open about an issue so often stigmatised. To be an artist willing to explore such issues, to express them publicly can only help others in similar situations. There is real heart to Slugdge’s fury, executed with a glowering intelligence that even the band underestimates. It’s something that is striking a chord with a growing legion of fans, “Enough to invade a small island” posted Matt gleefully on Facebook recently, who are so fanatical about a band who’ve only released their albums as free downloads, that some of them have made their own Slugdge shirts. Finally the band responded, an official shirt now available alongside a three disc box set of the albums.

So what’s next for a band uncaring of success? They’ve already achieved more than they anticipated, with a couldn’t give a fuck attitude that is way more metal than most. Matt is ambivalent. “We make music for ourselves, but I like the community of fans we have, they’re the icing on the cake. If it inspires others to make music and enjoy making it, then that’s what’s important. We might make another, all that matters is whether or not it’ll be fun, and right now we’re still having fun with slugs – they’re vile and repulsive sure, but so are some people.”

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Bands that have “gimmicks” tend to be an easy sell to fans. A gimmick offers an element of spectacle in a music world that’s become increasingly overcrowded. Having a handy, head-turning concept can help put a project in brackets, providing outrageousness for audiences accustomed to sameness.

Slugdge have a gimmick. The group write bizarre, off-kilter death metal about—you guessed it—slugs. More specifically, the group deal with malacology, the form of zoology that deals with mollusks—slugs, snails, octopus, squid, etc. But dig a little deeper, and it becomes clear that Slugdge are not out to write jokey songs that are as big on punchlines as they are on riffs. In Slugdge’s world, the snails and slugs are metaphors for the current state of the world.

“At the beginning of the band, it was all about being really grimy and slimy,” says vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Matt Moss. Slugdge formed in Lancashire, England in 2012, and released their first three albums on a name-your-price basis on Bandcamp. Initially, Slugdge was just Moss and guitarist Kev Pearson, but now they’re a full-fledged band, rounded out by bassist Moat Lowe and a drummer whose name has yet to be announced. With their savvy integration of black metal, death metal, prog, and grindcore, their music often calls to mind similarly avant-garde icons like Akercocke.

Now signed to Willowtip Records, the band’s latest release, Esoteric Malacology is a blitzkrieg of styles and vocal approaches, chock full of neo-classic shredding, jazzy guitar runs, and furious blast beats, occasionally set against a backdrop of haunting, monk-like chanting that transforms into guttural, death metal-style growls.

The lyrics are as complex as the music. Reducing the band to the “slug metal” tag doesn’t do justice to the depth of their concept. While surface comparisons to Lovecraft are unavoidable (there are recurring lyrical references to slug overlords named Rhaexorog and Lord Yeth’Shuul, and their 2014 album Gastronomicon is an ode to Lovecraft’s Necronomicon ), underneath that sticky veneer is something far more compelling: a deeply considered narrative that addresses anarcho-primitivism, anti-globalism, Brexit, and the mass extinction of the human race. On “Crop Killer,” Moss sings, “The soldiers won’t defend the hive / When the Queen neglects to satisfy the builders / You like to play the devil’s advocate, passive and impotent / Brood over fallen empires / That were built upon the bones of millions.”

“I’m really, really left-wing, but I don’t tend to bring that into Slugdge so much,” says Moss. “But occasionally, and especially with the ‘brood over fallen empires’ thing…with Brexit, we’ve had this sort of thing like, ‘Make Britain Great Again,’ same with the MAGA thing in the [United States]. Great? Again? The British Empire?”

He elaborates, explaining how the song also deals with humanity’s “domestication,” and the fact that, while we have improved in many ways, we’ve also developed dependencies on certain creature comforts.

“That sort of need or want to return to a time where things were a bit more brutal, and perhaps a bit more romanticized—you get people saying these things like, ‘Things would be better if it were like it was in the time of the ancient Vikings or ancient Spartans.’ No, it wouldn’t.”

He draws parallels between the current wave of reactionary online commentary to the right-wing populism sweeping across the United States and Europe. “I mean, take heavy metal for example. It’s a globalized form of music, it’s everywhere. We can’t stop it…but then you see this resistance to that [globalization], a primitivism, whether it’s the new Trump movement, or whether it’s the Brexit. There are people who are not primitivists but are primitive, they want to push things back.”

Those themes also bleed into the band’s cosmic and sci-fi themes; it’s another connection back to Lovecraft, but in Moss’s view, Lovecraft used extraterrestrial terrors to “represent foreigners”; the band makes a conscious break from that xenophobia, instead using cosmic forces to represent mankind’s impending doom. In “Slave Goo World,” they sing of a “Psychic virus from the vast outer reaches” that offer “terrible vistas of a nihilistic future.”

“There are cross-global issues in the world that absolutely require everyone to be working together—like climate change, for example,” Moss says. “These are things that, if we don’t get them sorted out, we are doomed as a species—our entire species. Not our stupid Western civilization, or our ridiculous notion of our nation state. Our entire species . And that’s been a theme over all of our lyrics.”

-Sarah Kitteringham

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Esoteric Malacology

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Slug-Themed Death Metal Band SLUGDGE's New Song "Putrid Fairytale" Is So Heavy

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Slug Life: An Interview With Matt Moss Of Slugdge

Manny-O-Lito on March 30, 2018

Recently, a Last Rites-funded team of archaeologists made a surprising discovery, an ancient text hidden away in a cave, clearly foretelling of the rise of Mollusca and the latest album by his celestial emissaries, the almighty Slugdge. Here it is, presented in its entirety, never before seen by the eyes of humankind…

If you haven’t had your head squarely inside your own ass for the last few weeks you might have noticed that the internet is aflutter lavishing praise on Slugdge’s 2018 effort  Esoteric Malacology . That album has catapulted Slugdge from something of a cult favorite squarely into the forefront of the death metal scene.

After hearing Esoteric Malacology  it was clear that we needed to sit down with Matt Moss to chat about lyrical themes, nazism in metal and, of course, Ice-T.

Starting off light, people are always pretty psyched about your song titles. Is that something that you always enjoyed in other works? How much effort do you put into making your song titles have such depth?

They are usually the working titles that we didn’t change, unless they were completely ridiculous, and as you can probably tell, that bar is set very low indeed.  Really, though, they are just our way of paying homage to other bands, most of the time anyway.

In particular, “Crop Killer,” is one hell of a title given the lyrical content. Can you dive a bit deeper into what you’re going for here? There’s plenty about hive theory and power dynamics, what’s your take on the direction of human life on earth? What can we, as regular people, do to deter the inevitable collapse?

I feel like I should preface this response by saying that if you came for the riffs and the slugs, you needn’t read too much into my opinions expressed in the lyrics. Our first duty is to have fun.  I’m not really into the habit of foisting my political ideas onto people through our music. Having said that, no art is apolitical, and our final destination as a civilisation is relevant to the themes of the lyrics.

The title really has nothing to do with the actual subject matter at hand, to be honest; I’m just a fan of Ice-T.  “Crop Killer” was more to do with your typical Slug MO rather than relating directly to the controversial song by Body Count.  The lyrics are a pretty broad subject in that one, particularly focused on the current trend we’re seeing in the world: a belief that we can somehow “go backwards”.  I’m just an entertainer, not a political theorist, but I have quite strong opinions when it comes to the survival of our species irrespective of our national identities, creed, or the idea of a ‘clash of civilisations’

I believe we all want the same thing: a unified, peaceful, ordered world, but when it comes to how we get there, we all have very different ideas.  The trends I see are political vs economic vs religious, but I am very dubious of the idea we can dismantle the political system that, for all it’s flaws, we’ve spent a great deal of time trying to “tame” to benefit us, in favour of a corporate model which to me seems even more beyond the ken of regular people.  It’s effectively trading one master for another in my view. The concept of global theocracy, despite the whole theme of our band, is anathema to me.

There is another, more personal part of this though, which is this idea that things were somehow better in the past; they weren’t.  I see this meme flying around occasionally about how the Spartans and Vikings weren’t “snowflakes like people today,” or how young men in WW2 were somehow tougher back then because they were forced to fight for their survival.  My Grandfather fought in WW2, and the things that happened to him — seeing his friends killed, seeing death on that scale — these things haunted him for the rest of his days. An entire generation paid the price for the choices of the few.  Never again. You don’t want your children killed for perceived weakness, or sent to the agoge to have compassion beaten out of them. The Norsemen were a desperate people trying to escape geographical challenges in Scandinavia when they decided to invade England a thousand years ago.  The point is, you can’t compare what is with what was, but some parts of our history are cyclical. We can learn those lessons vicariously; the current refugee crisis is a good modern example. I don’t know the answer — I just have a good idea from history of what the incorrect response is.

Themes of selfishness pop up throughout the lyrics on the album, is that something you’re experiencing on a macrocosmic level or something that’s affecting your day-to-day life?

Both.  I’m as a much a product of my environment as anyone else, and very distrustful because of it.  I spend a lot of time thinking about what I’m going to do now before I do it, because i’ve been somewhat “impulsive” in the past: cruel, selfish and stupid.  I’m all for forgiving people’s transgressions because I’ve made plenty, but as stated earlier, there are some macrocosmic instances of selfishness that will destroy us unless we get our shit together now.  They say our economic system isn’t a zero sum game, but when you take from the world, transform nature into shit, then dump shit back into nature, well, that’s going to have consequences. As we get rich the rest of life on Earth is denuded and life is pushed to the brink of extinction.  So we can talk all we want about how it’s the best system tried thus far; it might be, and it’s a phase we may have needed in our development, but it’s also literally killing us. Maybe all of them will though. We can’t die out either so we have to try our best collectively. I’m 100% for taking our place among the stars, but we have to get our house in order first.  This planet is an oasis in a seemingly endless expanse of nothingness, let’s get our priorities in order. There is a great filter (see the fermi paradox) which we may have passed, or may lie before us. Mollusca may be a font of endless knowledge, the form of our destructor, or we ourselves may be the god in waiting; the first of our kind. Let’s see, shall we?

This is your first release on Willowtip, and really your first LP released via an actual label. Did that change the way you went into the album? What’s the experience been like with a label versus working independently?

There has certainly been more to do, but Willowtip are easy going, they let you be you and don’t encroach on our process.  I’ve said before that, in the past, I could release an album the day we finished it and start work on a new one the day after when we were independent.  Can’t do that now. However, the business side to music — vinyls, cds, merch — that’s all far less of a chore now Willowtip is handling things. When it comes to music, I was never very business-minded anyway; it’s a labour of love for us.

You were pretty open on social media about the whole Taake tour being canceled. I’m wondering if you can expand on that a bit and talk about what you see as going wrong in the insular metal scene and, maybe, what you see actually going well.

It baffles me how a grown man thought wearing a swastika on stage was going to go well in the current climate.  Yes, lots of people have done it in the past, either to poke fun or to be edgy and make some kind of “statement” (not sure what), but tensions are running high at the moment concerning a resurgence in some of the ideas related to fascism.

Do I think he is a nazi?  Probably not, no. As with Phil Anselmo’s “white wine” fueled debacle, it just makes me roll my eyes and think “That was very misguided”.  He was almost certainly trying to drum up publicity, and it blew up in his face. Seeking publicity by adopting controversial icons you then publicly denounce doesn’t seem “trve” to me, but I might be missing his overall point. I’m willing to give anyone a second chance.  Poking at religion is a fairly established part of heavy metal, and I’ve no problem with it. We have to be quite careful with that though. Attacking ideas? Fine. Persecuting people for them? No. Again, this theme of the cyclical nature of history is worth considering. If the belief system is sufficiently violent, then, yes, we must confront that, but I think what a lot of people would be surprised to find is people within those religious traditions who hold the same opinion as them, and fight constantly within them for reform, be they believers or apostates.

That being said, I’ve heard (can’t verify because I wasn’t there) that threats were made, and it resulted in shows being shut down.  I don’t believe we should do that, either. Subject matter in metal and punk has also been fairly shocking, be it Cannibal Corpse, Mayhem, GG Allin or whoever.  Some of my favourite bands have espoused stuff straight out of the Satanic Bible, which I view as Ayn Rand for people who like goats and chalices, but I would never attempt to shut them down.  Even our lyrics have parts you could mistake for my opinions, but they are often being told from the perspective of an alien/nature itself. “Don’t ban it; just don’t buy it,” is what I would say.  I’m influenced/informed by Norwegian black metal, but there are members of that scene that will never get a penny from me, even if I think their music is good. No one is perfect, I get it, but there is a line.   

The new album is just remarkable, not to say your previous releases haven’t been excellent in their own right. What are your expectations for this one and did you feel like something “special” was happening while you were writing it?

I had no expectations, really. I never do; we just write, and if we enjoy it, cool. If we don’t, we scrap it and start again.  We are constantly blown away by the response we get. It didn’t hit home until the other day when someone from one of my favourite bands was telling me how much he loved it.  That made it more real to me, because previously most of what I’d seen was online, and the online world has this weird unreality to it. I know some of the reasons why people like us, and they are the reasons I personally like making this music, which is lucky!  Still, the response is much more than I anticipated, and I think we have the fans and certain journalists (also fans themselves) to thank for that, really. In the early days, it felt like it was just being passed from friend to friend, like the old days, and that’s a good feeling.  They are part of Slugdge, too, which is something that is reflected in many of the themes, and something I hope continues.

You close out the record with some serious Latin. Did you study Latin in school or are those things you’re pulling from biblical texts? It seems to me that you’re really creating your own universe or galaxy within which to frame your ideas. What’s the relationship between what you’re doing and religion?

I’m not a religious person, but I was raised Catholic, and in Catholicism, there is this strain of fire and brimstone kind of preaching I always found quite amusing.  Hell and damnation is a given, but I never disagreed with that sentiment either. Life is pain; it’s struggle, and through struggle, we are born anew. You get similar things in Islam with the concept of Jihad, and the Hebrew Bible is extremely heavy going, too, in regards to the wrath of God.  It’s not just the Abrahamic religions that I draw inspiration from — there are interesting parts of others, particularly Zoroastrian beliefs, Hinduism and my personal favourite, the Mayan pantheon, the Popol Vuh being one of those holy texts that just leaves you thinking “what the Xibalba is going on?”.  Then there’s the work of Lovecraft. In terms of mythology, that was a game-changer for me, but I’ve said a lot about that before.

The Latin thing just felt suitable, and it’s something that crops up a lot in black metal, so it’s a nod to that/taking the piss, because when it’s put together, in reality, it won’t make much sense, and it rarely does when other bands do it either.  I’m not a student of Latin; I have a baseline understanding of it, though. There are bits like “Numquam non Paratus” etc that do have personal meaning to me, though: It’s the motto of my father’s family. He was an artist, probably responsible for much of who I’ve become, despite our differences, but he died before he could see me really explore my artistic side.  I think that despite everything, he would have been proud. Although, he was trained in classical Latin and Greek, so he’d probably go to great lengths to correct my grammar. That was him, though.

In a society based entirely on internet interactions, where words are typed out rather than spoken, do you care if people pronounce the band name properly?

No.  I made a short clip where I was correcting people’s pronunciation, but I’m not really bothered.  We toyed with the idea of making all the letters silent, but discussing us would have become too difficult.  Some people have expressed their hatred for the spelling, but once again, it’s not to be taken too seriously.  I saw someone complaining about how i’d written Transylvanian on the song “Transilvanian Fungus”, but I think they might have missed the point of that, too.  Being able to type things out and consider what you’re saying has its plus points, but context is often lost. I’d hope people take that into consideration with both formats. I think some of the tongue-in-cheek nature of what we do can be misinterpreted, but for the purposes of interviews, it’s usually better for me, as in person, I tend to waffle endlessly and forget what the question was.  Anyway, I’m starting to waffle.

• Category: Features , Interviews
• Tag: Death , Slugdge , Technical , Willowtip

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Behold! The age of the slug is upon you. After consulting the lords of Slish, UK based experimental death metal duo Slugdge have decreed that the testament of Mollusca shall be known once again, and have returned with resplendent trinkets from the abysses beyond space and slime. Bathe in the lurid repugnance that is Mollusca and purchase the physical manifestation of his word; the Cosmic Cornucopia! The highly lauded “Dim And Slimeridden Kingdoms”, “Gastronomicon” and “Born Of Slime” will finally receive a proper physical release as a 3 disc digipack set via Willowtip. Journey through the decrepitude of Slugdge's first three years, translating the terrible portents of the netherslugs who permeate the fabric of our very reality, and spare yourself total metaphysical annihilation at the slimy feelers of our new gastropod overlords. Slugdge's third oozing installment; Dim and Slimeridden Kingdoms, which ended up on several “best of 2015” lists, will also be available in vinyl format in a limited edition gatefold, so you can earn even more favor with the putrid ones. Wrap your dry, desiccated cadavers in slime imbued fineries, and attempt to achieve transcendental levels of repulsiveness, while simultaneously showing your devotion to the lord of all reality. Praise Mollusca.

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A new album from blackened sludge metal band Slugdge remains a going concern. Speaking on social media yesterday, March 27th, the band made mention of that ‘significantly delayed” follow-up to 2018’s “ Esoteric Malacology “.

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