The band has been compared a lot to the likes of Isis, Neurosis, Old Man Gloom, et al. Yet Men in Search of the Perfect Weapon's take on it is heavier. Right from the start of their self-titled album the riffs are laterally pounding your speakers. The sound makes me think of a sledgehammer being slammed on an anvil and bouncing back with an equal force. As the matter of fact, the heaviness of tone makes me believe that the guitars are being indeed played by sledgehammers instead of picks. The whole album, despite any changes of rhythms, moods and speed is a downward spiral pushed by extra-chunky bass and drums that hit just the right beat. The low end flows with a condensed fuzzy sound and the result is so tense you could touch it. While fitting the description well enough to be lumped in with the sludge and doom bunch, Men in Search of the Perfect Weapon certainly contend for a distinctive position in those ranks.

Apart from the occasional clean interlude, the audial emanations can mostly be divided into two categories: the odium-based and usually more up-tempo sections, which are juxtaposed beside the melodic and often crushingly heavy portions. With the former, there is a greater focus on flattening the listener like a steamroller by means of thick, sludgy, barreling riffs, complete with throaty rasps from the vocalist, and a drummer that seems to intuit just the right beats to hit as the bass rumbles underfoot. Moving on to the latter of the two categories, I can see where the comparisons to Isis and its ilk come from. These slowed-down riff-fests are perfectly interspersed, and sometimes blended, throughout the music, making the guitars heavier and more melodic. "Downward Spiral" has some incredibly infectious grooves that make me want to thrash my head in ways I haven't felt since Buried at Sea's Migration. Any fan of doom or sludge would be a fool to disregard this awesome album.

Men in Search of the Perfect Weapon arrange a sound wall somewhere in between southern sludge tunes and heavy music. It could be described as a mixture between bands like Eyehategod, Bongzilla, Grief to the likes of Neurosis, Isis and Old Man Gloom. Men in Search of the Perfectg Weapon definitely create something new.

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