Burmese, Fistula - Burmese/Fistula (CD 2004)

Fitting cover art adorns what promises to be a seriously heavy listen, it has the force of a gorilla punching your stomach in. Burmese create an unholy racket of distortion and feedback tantrums that culminate in 30 second songs that are even more noisy than noise itself. Aptly described as a ‘confrontational low-frequency destruction unit’, they’ve been compared to Merzbow and Painkiller and they are even more unwholesome than Mistress would be if they were skinned alive and rolled in salt and vinegar crisps. Fistula deliver 4 tracks of evil-sludge that begins with ‘Green Lung’ which is the sound of pained coughing over a barren backdrop of doom. The final three tracks are all well crafted and infectious sludge/crust numbers that are in a similar vein to Eyehategod and Iron Monkey, filled with bad attitude and noxious venom.