The Shits – Diet Of Worms

Diet of Worms shows up unannounced, kicks the door in, and fills the room with feedback before you’ve had a chance to object. That’s the deal with The Shits, and after nearly a decade together, they’ve never been more assured in their nastiness.

The Leeds six-piece—yes, six, including three guitarists, which should either terrify or delight you—have made a record that sounds like it was wrung out of something damp and faintly alive. Opener “In A Hell” runs for seven punishing minutes and still somehow leaves you wanting more of whatever horrible thing it was doing to your eardrums. It’s the kind of track that sounds like a finale, which makes the fact that it’s the opener all the more deranged.

What separates this from standard noise-rock brutalism is the sly intelligence underneath the grime. Vocalist Callum Howe has grown into something genuinely distinctive — less of a screamer now, more of a snarler, his thick Yorkshire vowels dragging every line somewhere between contempt and confession. “Joyless Satisfaction” is a career highlight, a title that perfectly encapsulates the band’s whole ethos: there’s real pleasure here, it’s just arrived coated in something you’d rather not identify.

The expanded use of wah and flange pedals pushes the record into genuinely psychedelic territory, though not the pleasant, tie-dye kind. This is bad-trip psychedelia—vivid, paranoid, and lit by flickering fluorescent light. “Thank You For Being A Friend” is particularly unhinged; the title’s warmth curdled into something far more unsettling by the time the track finishes mauling you.

Closer “Three O’Clock in the Morning” sends you off properly rattled, Howe sounding like a man who hasn’t slept in weeks and has made his peace with that. It’s the perfect ending to an album that never once blinks.