Fister - No Spirit Within

Hailing from the confluence of infectious disease, arbitrary violence, and rivers of industrial filth that is St. Louis MO, FISTER have 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. Pairing their seismic live offerings with more than a dozen releases, they have literally poured their blood into the work along the way - for their 2012 EP Violence, the band members had blood drawn and mixed with the ink used to print the liner notes. From the hazy bulldozer bongripping of debut LP Bronsonic to 2015's impossibly dismal IV, a gruesome and lysergic 44 minute long single track that tests the limits of adjectives like heavy or bleak, their sound is continually (d)evolving. 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. No Clean Singing perfectly defined FISTER as stupefyingly heavy and heart-wrenching, The Sleeping Shaman qualified them as uber-miserable, crus