Fister – No Spirit Within

Vinyl LP pressing. 2018 release from the St. Louis, MO-based doom metal band. Fister has been sublimating their brutally toxic environment into a deliberate and belligerent challenge to the eardrums since 2009. Comprised of drummer Kirk Gatterer, guitarist/vocalist Marcus Newstead, and Kenny Snarzyk on bass and vocals, this trio converts an eclectic swarm of extreme metal influences into the sonic analogue of trench warfare. Concussive, bloody, exhausting. Honed to grisly sharpness through years of performance, they have shared countless stages with countless musicians, including supporting sludge icons Eyehategod and Crowbar and appearances at the SXSW, Psycho Las Vegas, and Roadburn festivals. Consistently finding new ways to hit bottom in a sequence of splits with fellow underground juggernauts Dopethrone, Primitive Man, and Teeth among others, Fister has emerged as one of the nastiest strains of doom metal, adept at fusing the narcotic tension of drowning in misery with the planet-splitting intensity of devout amplifier worship. Producing metal so poisonous, polluted, and nihilistic that sludge-doom-funeral-death are the only labels that can hang, the midwestern outfit are overpowering and relentless at city-leveling volume like a Sisyphean artillery brigade cursed to push two hundred tons of speaker cabinets uphill forever.