…the world ends when you’re dead: FISTER – ‘IV’

Pain or damage don't end the world. Or despair or fucking beatings. The world ends when you're dead. Until then, you got more punishment in store. –Al Swearengen


And St. Louis, Missouri three-piece Fister will be the instrument of your punishment. The prolific sowers of destructive doom seem to sink to new, despicable lows with each successive release and the band’s latest continues the downward descending trend. Rather than molest the listener’s senses with a handful of tunes the masochistic trio have opted to assault the unsuspecting with an aural ear-depredation of no less than 40 minutes of sonic despair (or infinity,as it happens, if one never lifts the needle).

Gemini, the band’s previous effort (review HERE), was a masterpiece of depravity and downtrodden doom. With David Cronenberg’s ‘Dead Ringers’ as their guide Fister managed to unleash a disturbing soundtrack—their deepest, most well-rounded recording to-date—that illuminated the band in a new, if not lurid, light. Gemini, though the band’s grimmest release, was also their lushest with the inclusion of piano, violin, tuba and trombone. IV makes no such pretense as the album, for the most part, is a journey through a no-win void. If hopelessness is a finite well, then Fister manage to pass through the bottom—a seemingly impenetrable obstacle—to unbeknownst depths of futility and woe.

IV is a massive, labyrinthine tune that heaves and writhes like the death-throes of a fallen storm giant. Moments of pure, unadulterated menace and loathing are counterbalanced with moodier moments of sparse instrumentation. Due to the band’s sheer negative will IV stands as one of this year’s ugliest releases to-date. Life dealt you a sour hand? Put on Fister’s IV and let the catharsis cleanse and purify you…

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