Noisepicker’s The Earth Will Swallow The Sun is a gloriously twisted, grizzled, and thrilling entry into the blues-sludge-doom-punk-whatever-you-want-to-call-it canon. Kicking off with the stunningly stark What You Deserve, the album wastes no time in announcing its intent. A lone, held major chord opens the record, resolved by a minor, then back again, looping hypnotically like a moral pendulum. Then comes Harry Armstrong’s bassy, gravel-throated, whiskey-soaked voice like Tom Waits reincarnated as a pissed-off exorcist. The magic lies in the simplicity. The track barely shifts harmonically, all theatre, archetype, and atmosphere. A revenge fantasy rendered with the brute force of sludge and the melodrama of outlaw blues. The Earth Will Swallow The Sun sets itself apart through sheer character, with twisted, unhinged, and frequently hilarious stories.

The second track Chew jolts you with it’s janky 7/8 groove, lurching forward like a tank on fire. The lyrics are about hating your own thoughts with a psychotic intensity (“I had to smash my face in/So sick and tired of that stupid grin”). It’s deeply funny and deeply unsettling, backed by chaotic vocal howls from both members like a pair of injured wolves. In the title track, Armstrong just lays into his guitar strings with a pair of drumsticks, making no attempt to “play” in a conventional sense, and it works brilliantly. The record is bookended by eerie and unsettling blues at the start and end, with the closing track Lunatics more like a haunted echo of everything that came before than a “song”. Between those poles, the album swells into loud and unhinged punk chaos, complete with a cinematic arc. It’s rare to find an album this enjoyable that leaves you both laughing and feeling eerily unsettled all at once.