STOMACH: “PARASITE”

(The debut album of Chicago-based Stomach was released last Friday by Hibernation Release, and today we’re helping spread the word through the following review by Christopher Luedtke.)

As the world grows uglier so does perspective. Whatever we have gleamed or counted as a civilized society is long slipping through frail fingers. One, if so inclined, could likely trace the cracks in the collective consciousness through music alone. Things keep getting uglier, like a brain fever that never subsides. Maybe for our times things have just gotten more honest, raw, and ugly from an art perspective. It’s something to consider when listening to Stomach’s debut full-length Parasite.

The Chicago, IL duo consists of drummer/vocalist John Hoffman (Weekend Nachos, Ledge) and guitarist Adam Tomlinson (Sea of Shit, Sick/Tired), two players who are no strangers to composing raw-nerve music. Stomach, originally started by Hoffman, began as a loose version of Earth or Grief worship. Since its inception in 2020, the project has released two killer demos. However, now the project is ready to reign down holy hell with their debut full-length Parasite.

photo by Britt Crowe

The scope of Stomach is the aforementioned Earth and Grief worship but with nods to powerviolence and noise. Realistically what comes through more than anything is a comparison to bands like Primitive Man or Fister.

Stomach is a style of doom/sludge metal that lives on waves of tension. Never does the band falter in this regard—start to finish, Parasite has its hands around the listener’s collective throats. Riffs and melody are slow as hell. “Tooth Decay”, for example, is almost all noise, slow guitar, and screams. There’s no drums. It sounds like a caged, pissed-off animal. Meanwhile other tracks like “Midnight In Pain” offer up more of a traditional sounding doom/sludge track. Slow-moving, but the kind that’s carrying a macuahuitl with intent to use.

There are bursts of speed on Parasite. Though the band, much like Primitive Man, tends to hover strictly in slow, tense rhythms, they will kick things up. “Train Track Argument” is a straight powerviolence track any way you cut it. Breakdowns, blasts, harder breakdowns—it evokes and acknowledges the genre and then moves onto the next track in under a minute.

But other tracks have some speedy sections as well. “Double Lung Transplant” starts out like a hardcore track before breaking into noise and drone/doom. It’s like an acknowledgment of the past from the band as they trudge into the present. Though it could be an early experiment to further marry doom and powerviolence, two genres that could get further fused together.

Parasite feels like an exercise in torment, pain, and pure anger, though the band say there is no inherent meaning to the lyrics and they’re open to interpretation. So if one wants to interpret them as being about puppy dogs and flower fields, by all means, help yourself. Parasite is a ruthless record. Slow, calculated in its intensity, but not scared to summon a little bit of punk and powerviolence as it goes on. It’s darker sound-wise than anything either artist has done elsewhere. And lord is it crushing.

https://www.hibernationrelease.com/product/stomach-parasite-lp
https://stomachdoom.bandcamp.com/album/parasite-3