Fear in a Handful of Dust…ELITIST Review

I want to go to the land where people do not smile, to the place where dirty is the new clean. If I did find this place, I know what band would waving their stench flag high – it would be Portland’s ELITIST. Their album Fear in a Handful of Dust, out via Season of Mist, is one blackened slab of putrified hate that sounds epicly awesome to my ears. This band is super gnarly, and this album will take you on a stench-filled ride that you will not want to get off. ELITIST use distortion & feedback as a whole other fucking instrument of destruction, and it builds up the tension in their songs. Also, the way they weave these two elements into their tunes, it also seems to open up room for experimentation. To me, ELITIST’s foundation is in the world of making everything sound fucked up, & they do an ultra sick job at it. They paint ugly audio portraits with the fury of d-beat & black metal, and they will pound you over the head with a sludge hammer until you scream for mercy. Under the sonic cesspool that is Fear in a Handful of Dust, you will hear a blackened voodoo blues thing infecting their sound, which adds an awesome groove into the mix. Check out their tune “Bound and Bent” – it starts off cracking the whip of mayhem before settling down into a pit were snakes dance. The singer in this band sounds like he had a huge drink of zombie juice before he laid his vocals, because he sounds as mean as the guards of Hades. To me, ELITIST make music for the mentally sane, so that we will stay that way in this insane fucking world we exist in. If you dig your dirge to give you that unhinged feeling, this album is right up your alley. What I really was impressed with about this album was how open the band was with taking chances & just not giving a fuck…so on that note, FUCK THE WORLD & DON’T ASK ME FOR SHIT!

[audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/08-Human-All-Too-Human.mp3|titles=ELITIST Human, All Too Human] [audio:http://staging.cvltnation.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/09-Bound-and-Bent.mp3|titles=ELITIST Bound and Bent]