In January of the year 2018, one year after the release of the ‘Teenage Graveyard Party’, the Slugs made the decision to postpone all performances and then receded into songcraft in search of new material that would become ‘The Decline and Fall of Everything’. Until now, only the ‘Head Ooze//Possession’ digital single, written much earlier and recorded way later, had been released and that was in December of 2019 -- before everything went to shit. After a few shows in Texas to showcase and work the new iron, the pandemic forced another performance hiatus which began the refining process for The Decline… And then finally, at the end of the year 2020, while the world stood still and time sloughed on, respects were paid to the maestro Michael Briggs and the songs laid down in live fashion. Recording the album live meant we had to hone the chops, made much more difficult by being spread out across the USA: Denton and Austin, Texas… Los Angeles… the Bay Area. The practice had to be done looking towards the future when the group could unite, and the results displayed here are the efforts of those few, long, years. The Decline reflects a myriad of riffage influences reaching in from all directions, held in the grip of the group minds’ eye and conveyed through heat and hammer. What started off as dozens of ideas has been distilled into ten songs channeled through our efforts to bring the best to bear of the blasts, the d-beats, the thrash, the doom, all the noise, and any kind of creativity that could help enhance the tradition of heavy metal. The album’s themes encompass the uncertainty and angst of feeling disconnected from the world and each other, a struggle to turn loss into growth and seek to serve as a living argument against a creeping nihilism. The musical and lyrical forms unite to tell a story through the distortion of time and air, to reveal what we’ve discovered at last after all these years and all this work: it never ends, only repeats.
Tracklist:
1. THE HAND FROM THE GRAVE
2. SWARM OF BEES
3. BAD CASTLE
4. MARASMOS
5. THE MEAT
6. THE SABOTEUR
7. SON OF THE PIG
8. DOS i DOS
9. SPIT ROAST
10. BLASPHEMY OF ALL MANKIND