{"id":156491,"date":"2026-04-27T13:24:30","date_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:24:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/?post_type=records&p=156491"},"modified":"2026-04-27T13:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-27T17:24:32","slug":"the-shits-diet-of-worms","status":"publish","type":"records","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/records\/the-shits-diet-of-worms\/","title":{"rendered":"The Shits – Diet Of Worms"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Diet of Worms<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Leeds six-piece\u2014yes, six, including three guitarists, which should either terrify or delight you\u2014have 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<\/em> all the more deranged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What separates this from standard noise-rock brutalism is the sly intelligence underneath the grime. Vocalist Callum Howe has grown into something genuinely distinctive \u2014 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\u2014vivid, 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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