(written by Islander)
“Rabid, misanthropic sludge from Sweden.” That’s a succinct and pointedly accurate description of the music made by the band Slôdder, as displayed so far in a pair of 2018 EPs and then in a pair of albums, their self-titled full-length in 2021 and 2023’s A Mind Designed To Destroy Beautiful Things.
And now they have a third album that will drop on November 26th via Shit County Records. Its name is Narcissist, and we’re giving you the chance to hear all of it today. The music is indeed rabid and misanthropic, but as you’ll discover, that’s only part of its personality.
Of course we have some of our own thoughts to share about the album, but we should begin our introduction with the band’s own thoughts:
“SLDR put a lot of miles between this album and our last. We made friends, enemies and memories.
“Highs and lows, good and bad times. Lost a couple of people because life rolls that way. Every experience went into the songs written for this one. It is a mix of frustration, depression, anxiety, fear and anger all boiled down to 10 songs.
“The hopelessness is still there, boiling under the skin. The world is goin to shit faster than anyone ever could have imagined. Greed is God and humanity worships at false altars.
“This is our new album, Narcissist. It’s angry.”
Hell yes, it is indeed angry music. But as the foregoing quotation accurately represents, it does also channel other emotions — feelings of frustration, depression, anxiety, fear, and more.
Slôdder chose “Buzzmonkey” as the album’s opening song, a sub-three-minute bulldozer propelled by gritty and grisly riffing that surges with a vicious throb, backed by skull-smacking beats and scorch-the-earth screams. But even in the opener Slôdder show some other moods, slowing to a bleak crawl and making the music dismally moan and coldly claw (though the screamed vocals are still unhinged) before they give their wrecking machine the gas again.
In the other nine songs Slôdder change the track lengths in dramatic fashion. Two of those nine, “Benefits of a destructive lifestyle pt. 1” and “Benefits of a destructive lifestyle pt. 2“, don’t even reach the one-minute mark, but the band still shove listeners off-balance before they’re done. “Part 1” lurches and stomps, explodes like a chaotic mauler, and then stumbles and staggers, with harrowing roars joining those throat-ripping screams, while “Part 2” moves in reverse — slow and grimly stalking at first, then violently berserk.
On the other hand, those other nine songs also include two much longer tracks, with “Grief” coming in at more than 7 minutes and album closer “Crippled symmetry” almost right at 9 minutes. Not surprisingly, Slôdder range a bit more widely in those songs, though they mostly use the extra time to hammer home their musical messages more ruthlessly and implacably. They also still anchor both of them with stringed instruments tuned to sound like geiger counters in the presence of flesh-pealing plutonium and drums that may leave you fingering your cranium for cracks.
In the range of “Grief“, the music is primitive and plodding, brutish and beleaguered, broken and oozing bleakness. Shrieks of feedback and strange electronic vibrations also make the music feel tortured, while corrosive, metronome-like chords feel like the cruel ministrations of the torturer. It’s a damned grim march whose repeating refrains and shattering vocals seem determined to suck the soul right out of you as you nod along (along with any hope you might be harboring). You also might feel like searching for bruises on your body turning ghastly shades of yellow.
If anything, “Crippled symmetry” seems even more hopeless, an even slower head-down march toward a mass grave in waiting, punctured by terrible screams and miserably wailing, but still abysmally vibrating, fretwork that creates refrains of abject agony.
It’s a good thing those two long songs aren’t back-to-back in the track list. The band wisely separated those two soul-sucking beasts with the two ultra-short tracks mentioned above, as well as “Peacock syndrome” and “Whatever sanity was left“.
The former includes prominently musing bass-lines and eerily quivering feedback, as well as spine-popping beats and ruinously lunging riffage that’s also beastly but cold-hearted, and in that song Slôdder also uncork their anger in faster, blood-rushing bursts of greater rage. In the latter of the two songs, Slôdder get back into bulldozing and skull-busting mode, delivering a mid-paced mauler, often undergirded with vibrantly neck-bending rhythms. It might be the most infuriated song on the record, and one of the most pulse-pounding.
We haven’t touched on the three songs that follow the opener “Buzzmonkey” before “Grief” arrives — “PBR“, “Divine intermezzo“, and “Brat salad“. Let’s just say that none of those are as desolate as “Grief” and “Crippled symmetry“. “PBR” is more in line with the raging, heavyweight punishment of “Whatever sanity was left“; “Divine intermezzo” is almost psychedelic, but also sounds like a hulking behemoth on the move; and the bass-led “Brat salad” might be even more creepy and twisted (it’s probably the album’s most infernally demonic and brazenly haughty song), but in some ways one of the most heart-breaking tracks too.
Well, that’s enough words don’t you think? Probably way more than enough. Now we’ll turn you over to a real crusher of an album:
SLÔDDER is:
Henrik – Vocals
C-J – Guitar
Martin – Bass & additional vocals
Henrik – Drums
Narcissist was recorded, mixed, and mastered by Joona Hassinen at Studio Underjord in 2025. It will be released by Shit County Records on vinyl and digital formats. They recommend it for fans of EyeHateGod, Iron Monkey, Fistula, Weedeater, Brainoil, Anti Cimex, and Discharge.
ORDER:
https://sldr.bandcamp.com/album/narcissist
FOLLOW:
https://www.facebook.com/slddr/
https://www.instagram.com/sldr.band