Nightstick - "Blotter", 1997

LSD can be applied to blotter paper, which is then cut into small, decorated squares, each containing a single dose. With an album title like this, best explained by its cover—showing the band members dropping multiple tabs of acid—there's little doubt about how the music will sound. It's best described as a highly psychedelic sludge/doom/noise nightmare that could be used to torture prisoners of war, all kinds of posers, or even your neighbor. You don't just listen to "Blotter"; you experience it.

Formed by ex-Siege drummer Robert Williams, one might expect Nightstick to be a hardcore or power-violence band. While he retains the misanthropic, anti-everything attitude of his previous band, musically he took the opposite direction, though Siege's sludgy "Grim Reaper" song could have been seen as a sign of things to come.

Since its formation, Nightstick has approached music much like late 1960s and early 1970s psychedelic bands; the classic song format is completely disregarded, favoring a jam session-oriented style that unfolds like an acid trip gone terribly wrong. If Blue Cheer had been a 1990s band, it probably would have sounded like this; "Blotter" is like taking "Vincebus Eruptum" and dunking it in a vat of toxic sludge. Even the idea of including three cover versions out of six songs—albeit in a completely twisted form—recalls a practice common to many bands of the 60s and 70s; Blue Cheer itself, or early Led Zeppelin, for example, rounded out their debut albums with their renditions of classic blues songs.

In this case, the three songs that Nightstick unmercifully destroyed are Lydia Lunch's "Some Boys," Pink Floyd's "Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun," and Funkadelic's "Mommy, What's a Funkadelic?" The latter is the most bizarre choice, but it's just as unrecognizable, rendered as a noisy instrumental improvisation that evokes its 1970s counterpart only through a wah-wah pedal and a series of overdubbed guitar leads hard-panned left and right. The other two remain more faithful to the originals, retaining their main riffs and vocal lines, while obviously given the Nightstick treatment. Centered on depressive, crushing ultra-doom riffs and unpleasant, mournful vocals, the songs sound like the soundtrack to your impending suicide, fitting seamlessly within the album's tracklist.

The formula of "Blotter" is, in fact, largely consistent throughout the entire record, making it something to be endured as a single long song, not unlike Sleep's "Jerusalem"/"Dopesmoker." Most likely recorded live in the studio, the songs center on the trio jamming over a main heavy riff, progressively breaking it down into a maelstrom of ear-piercing noise. Two-minute-long, excruciating guitar feedback; incoherent, reverb-drenched solos; and filthy bass rumbling are all integral to the lengthy, largely instrumental tracks, which generally move at a very doomy pace but occasionally feature unexpected elements. For example, there is a sudden speed-up during the title track, while the album's closer—exquisitely titled "Fellating the Dying Christ"—is a sadistically annoying electronic/harsh noise piece that sounds like the control deck of a spaceship going haywire; it then shifts abruptly into what seems to be an eerie sacred choir recorded on crackling vinyl. It would be pointless to analyze "Blotter"'s songwriting further, since the songs reject any logic and are based on a main riff that serves as the backbone of the track before degenerating into a series of unscripted instrumental fugues. The album's production is surprisingly good, with very analog, organic-sounding drums and a wall of fuzzy, harshly distorted guitars and bass. 

The band released two more records in 1998 and 1999, marking a prolific and inspired period before singer/bassist Alex Smith was incarcerated until 2004. Nightstick resurfaced occasionally in the following years, even releasing a new full-length album in 2012, but "Blotter" remains an underground classic, and its uncompromising, malicious attitude still oozes from its grooves after almost 30 years.

It's an unapologetically extreme, crushingly deafening display of sonic torture that could only be surpassed by actually experiencing the band's grotesque live shows, where, amid insane volumes, extended versions of the songs, and the highly unsettling dancing clown Padoinka, the nightmare was complete.

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