Review
The Body
No One Deserves Happiness

Since 2010 and the release of their album All The Waters of the Earth Turn to Blood, sludge outfit The Body have really taken off. Originally found back in 1999, the band from Oregon did not seem to be very active, releasing a good debut album in 2004, but it would take six years until their next full-length. However, since 2010 they are really going on overdrive, putting out two excellent albums in Christs, Redeemers and I Shall Die Here, a series of awe-inspiring EPs, with Master, We Perish standing out and intriguing collaborations with Thou (twice),Vampillia, Krieg and an upcoming one with Full of Hell, as well as collaborating in the Wrekmeister Harmonies collective.

Finding its way in this series of stellar works in No One Deserves Happiness, and according to the band, their goal here is to produce the most disgusting pop album of all time, mutilating songs of love and loss into their own dystopian and misanthropic scenery. The sludge storm fits perfectly within this idea, unleashing one hell of heavy riffs. The annihilating approach of the opening track breaks into a slow devastation of distortion and chaos, and in a more straightforward method in “Hallow/Hollow”, allows the post-apocalyptic concept of the band to surface, while at the same time, more imposing manifestations follow with “Starving Deserter” and “Prescience” opening a slow, ritualistic march towards an inevitable end.

But there is much more to The Body than in your standard sludge outfit. The band has done excellent work in enhancing their sludge core with extreme leanings towards noise, techno and industrial music. Especially the extensions towards the electronic domain work excellent in their concepts, and is a unique aspect amongst extreme doom and sludge bands. Synth percussion is mixed alongside the drums and live instruments, granting a detached, colder vibe to their musical ideas. “Wandering” radiates that mechanical vibe, with the repetition and techno influence pivotal in the process. The travel carries on with “Two Snakes” and a more bouncy and upbeat concept, the glitch induced “Adamah” and the industrial feel of “Shelter Is Illusory.” When you add the noise input, from the devastating effects of the opening track and the subtle background torture of “Shelter Is Illusory” to the fade-into-the-wall-of-noise in “Hallow/Hollow,” “Starving Deserter” and “Prescience” everything falls into place.

But still, The Body have not completed their concepts with the merge of sludge, noise, industrial and techno. The instrumentation gets more adventurous, something apparent in “The Fall and The Guilt” with the piano and clean vocals resting on top of the noise floor. Especially the clean vocals, courtesy of Chrissy Wolpert (The Assembly of Light Choir) and Maralie Armstrong (Humanbeast) create a great contrast with the main cutthroat vocals of The Body, appearing huge in “Shelter Is Illusory” and eerie in “Two Snakes.” Or coming as if from a dream amongst the distortion and saturation of “Starving Deserter” or the shoegaze drenched “The Myth Arc.”

No One Deseves Happiness is a complete record, with The Body putting finishing touches on their sound. Tracks such as “For You” just show how extreme this band can get, while at the same time throwing a track such as “The Fall and The Guilt.” If The Body set out to create the most vulgar, stomach turning pop record out there, they have succeeded with No One Deserves Happiness.