With Saltpig's debut album, Mitch Davis takes a dark journey into occult themes and horrific storylines dancing around melodic yet dissonant layers of noisy guitars, overdriven bass and floating drums. The album forgoes the expected fuzz sounds for a palette of tones that largely disregards genre in order for Saltpig to build songs that are simply evil and completely human. It's fully embracing a love of distortion and feedback in all forms while pushing tape to its breaking point. The band plays with different tempos and tunings as a way mostly to keep things interesting for themselves, creating what feels akin to a greatest hits album where the songs take on different personalities but feel completely like Saltpig songs at the same time. They find influences from early Judas Priest, Mercyful Fate and Black Sabbath at a time when metal was still finding its way. Rewind to an era before metal began its evolution towards greater precision, bigger drums and more robust production, then imagine that evolution taking a different turn.