‘Seedless fields, resource extraction, limitless yields, depletion inaction, betrayed by brothers, extinction distraction, consume the mother’ (Paradise / Parasite)

Growth. Always growth.  And who is this growth for? It simply filters into the same overflowing pockets.  It is a remorseless cycle that sees a planet and its people sucked dry by the bloated, parasitic pursuit of endless consumption.  As political philosopher Nancy Fraser so evocatively suggests, ‘Like the ouroboros that eats its own tail, capitalist society is primed to devour its own substance’.   Now, let Cell Rot be your guide to our ever-bleaker future.

Cell Rot, who feature members of Gather, Graf Orlock, and Reivers among others, have been building an impressive body of work since their 2018 debut, Violent Spirals.  And Parasite, the Oakland band’s third 12-inch, sees them in typically uncompromising form.  Their sound is rooted in darkly metallic crust, but it is also laced through with influences drawn from burly straight-up hardcore, power violence, and even a dash of anarcho-punk.

The lacerating guitar tone is cleaner, and yet somehow simultaneously filthier, than this description might typically allow and the rhythm section packs an enviable bounce amid the furious blast beat eruptions.  Meanwhile, the demonically growled vocals unleash their desolate allegorical unpacking of cannibal capitalism and a world slowly being suffocated by greed.

From the tension dripping, feedback saturated opening to Good Morning that will have pits twitching in eager anticipation, the intensity doesn’t drop for even a moment from the bruising groove of Shadow People to the swaggering brutality of Earth-Eating Growth, before a vocal appearance from Mae Toon (Tørsö / Urban Sprawl) amid the sludge-mired climax to Nothing’s Coming brings proceedings to a wonderfully savage close.

‘Shovel time into the furnace, Human fuel keeps it burning, Ground down to dust, the cogs turn, You can never stop the turn’ (Churn)

Histamine have been a little quiet since their 2020 self-titled 7-inch.  But they are back, and have no doubt, their first album, Quality Of Life, is an absolute bruiser.  The Sydney band marshal slabs of hypnotic groove and plenty of spiteful stomp into a bulldozer of an onslaught.  The hefty reverb drenched riffage jousts with the equally muscular, echo-infused vocals as they dive into the anxiety, isolation, and sheer desperation born of our ever more atomised times.  And then, in an unexpected turn, crystalline melancholic leads and spiralling, metallic-leaning solos – the closer to It’s Not Hot is a particular banger – cut through with a piercing clarity.

The eight tracks are absolutely packed with drama.  From the barrelling breakdown of Weeding Out to the insidious melody braided through Links To The Chain, and from the bass fuelled venom of Perceived Reality to the melodic flourishes that prime the roared finale to Gold Tools, there is no quarter is shown.  And, quite frankly, you won’t be asking for any either.

‘I saw an angel last night, Dowsed in gasoline, Flowers grew from their skin, And withered in the fumes’ (Angel)

As the gilded few, facilitated by a deluded and self-serving political class, continue to rapaciously gut civic society, they point the finger of blame at those who are dispossessed and driven into ever more precarious insecurity by their relentless greed.  MSPAINT’s new 12-inch, No Separation, is a rousing, yet thoughtfully constructed, call to confront his age of estrangement.

Having formed in Hattiesburg in 2019, MSPAINT spent time honing their distinctive guitarless sound, before releasing their debut album, 2023’s Post-American.  And this latest EP, sees the band brimming with an even more assertive confidence.  The rhythmic, hip-hop tinged exhortations of the vocals remain stridently powerful, and the soaring choruses are even more infectious, while the rhythm section has been imbued with a refreshed industrial muscularity.

Now, of course, a significant onus rests on the synths, and they prove more than up to the challenge.  Indeed, in not seeking to directly replicate the guitars, they take things in some intriguingly unexpected directions.  From ominous stabs of metallic dub to hazily hallucinatory swells, by way of the swirling Middle Eastern accented melodies, the palette is a rich one.  It would be easy for such disparate elements to fall foul of a certain clunkiness, but such is MSPAINT’s command of their influences that they never feel anything less than entirely organic.

Lyrically, the darkly pulsating Drift (‘We were never free, Just cost effective, Paid in dirt, Bound to debt’) and Surveillance (‘Margins of profit will benefit evil, Structured around anything but the people’) challenge the warped economic consensus that is hollowing out our society.  Meanwhile, Wildfire (‘Are you not tired of waiting, for nothing to save you?) and the title track (‘Skyscrapers are pollution, Reflecting sky, Reflecting light, Directly into your eyes’) call out our own complicity.

However, their message is not without hope.  Throughout, it is underpinned with a fierce recognition of the power of community and collective organisation to act as a bulwark of resistance, and as a primer for social change.  This culminates in the redemptive closer Angel (‘I feel like the problem, I feel in the way, But I’m staying present, This is just today’) that recognises that even the most entrenched system only seems eternal up until the very moment that it is not.

‘My kids have lived before a hundred thousand times, My kids have walked the earth on paganistic roads…Their faces are young and kind, Their brains are wild and ancient’ (My Kids)

Cleveland’s Cruelster make a welcome return some seven years after their debut album, Riot Boys.  In the intervening period, members have been involved in a range of other projects, most pertinently perhaps, Knowso.  Both bands share a penchant for taut guitars and agitated rhythms, but whereas Knowso lean into a certain discipline through restraint, Cruelster’s approach is an altogether more hyperactive one.

Samples galore, jagged riffs, catchy hooks, duelling vocals, Irish pipes, and surprisingly melodic choruses are thrown into the melting pot with an atavistic relish.  That wholly formed songs emerge could provoke surprise where the level of focus and detailing that the band invest not so abundantly clear.  The energy that permeates the whiplash twenty-one tracks is utterly manic, yet shards of lucidity suddenly, fleetingly, emerge through the chaos.  The raucously layered Nuclear Word, the fiercely gyrating Now I’m Terrestrial, and the contagiously surging Mayor For A Day each land with a satisfying clarity.

As you would probably anticipate, this raw verve is matched by the lyrical themes as they plunge into a crazed labyrinth that takes in its stride, Julian Assange being in possession of nuclear launch codes, emigrating to Belarus to have a baby, and being under the control of a telekinetic mayor.  What exactly this all means is arguably open to conjecture, but my guess is that it may well be suggesting that we are all absolutely screwed.

‘Ein ziemlich guter freund der eigentlich, gar keiner mehr ist, beflügelt kaffee verschüttet’(Verschüttet) / ‘A pretty good friend who actually isn’t one anymore, inspires spilt coffee’ (Spilt)

Misere (Misery) are from Berlin, and if you didn’t know this before dropping the needle, your radar would definitely be heading that way from the very opening chords.  Their debut album is post-punk that readily embodies the arty inclined, austerely agitated spirit that their home city seems to so richly inspire.

The spartan, crystalline guitar is imbued with an eerie, otherworldly chime, while the moodily limber rhythm section locks-in with an unerring metronomic crispness.  The coldly detached German vocals then begin to weave their magic, beguiling in their emotional remoteness.  Melodic yet just shy of spoken word, they conjure a fractured, almost hallucinatory tableau of anxiety and isolation.

The palette is such an economic one that the subtle flares of invention that strike throughout do so with an arresting clarity.  From the enticingly layered vocals that erupt amid Flüchtigkeit (Volatility) to the ethereal chant that defines Edel (Noble), the spell is a hypnotically alluring one.

‘Dystopian society is not what we thought it would be, Pictured through smile and care, Humanity sinks to demise, And no one believes we have much to share’ (Sink)

Belgrade’s Staticø (Static) released their debut 7-inch, Il Nostro Cimitero (Our Cemetery), back in 2021.  It was well-executed, no-nonsense hardcore punk that was flecked through with an intriguing, but understated, post-hardcore sensibility.  Returning now with their first full-length, Absurdity Of This World, the band have given greater rein to those hinted at inventive instincts, and their ambition has been well-rewarded.

The band’s surging rhythmic base remains firmly intact, but those accents have been notably amplified.  The taut, jazz-tinged guitar leads inspire a jagged dance that can’t help but evoke the scent of Swing Kids, while the solos unfurl with an unexpectedly expansive flamboyance.  This experimentation flares brightly throughout.  From the extended wig-out that closes Rat Race to the brilliantly layered, largely instrumental closer The End, by way of the robustly melodic group chorus to Love Is Never Wrong and the ominously atmospheric intro to Lifeless that plunges you back to Peace Sells…But Who’s Buying? era Megadeth, the album continues to twist in unexpected directions.

Meanwhile, the urgently rasping vocals contemplate the poisonous consequences of entrenched socio-economic inequality and systemic misinformation.  They examine how they have fuelled the domestic political conflict that leaves many European countries, including their own, teetering ever closer to naked authoritarianism. Meanwhile, wilful false equivalencies are used internationally to turn a blind eye to mass militarised murder.

‘I refuse to accept things I cannot change, I no longer accept things I cannot change, I am changing things I cannot accept, I won’t accept’ (I Refuse)

Anti-Corpos have been active now for over twenty years, having first formed in Sao Paulo in 2002, before releasing a trio of EPs between 2014 and 2020.  Now, having relocated to Berlin, the trio’s debut full-length, Backlash, has landed.

This is noise-drenched, metallic-edged post-hardcore.  Jagged shards of discordant riffage and swells of dissonant melody are underpinned by a rhythm section that sweeps from staccato stop-starts to semi-blast beat eruptions, by way of atmospheric, martial inclined interludes with a ferociously controlled brutality.  These sharply mutating dynamics are readily matched by vocals that segue with relish from the abrasively barked to the melodically off-kilter and ominously spoken.  The savage contortions of Hellfire and Migrant Hearts capture this intensity particularly vividly.

The menacing build of the opener I Refuse, which calls on the writing of Angela Davies, provides the perfect introduction to the album’s themes.  The band’s focus is on the intersection of female, queer, and emigrant lived experiences as they tackle the relentless, and exhausting, struggles of living in the face of systematic bigotry.

‘Somos la evolución? Somos la regreción? Somos la destrucción?…Un dia asesinos, al otro salvadores. El mayor exterminio, la existencia del hombre.’ (Extinción) / ‘Are we evolution? Are we regression? Are we destruction?…One day murderers, the next saviors. Total extermination, the existence of man.’ (Extinction)

Hailing from Lima, Tomar Control (Take Control) have been active for over a decade now, and return here with their third album, Frente Al Miedo (Facing Fear).  Their earliest material was rooted very much in the traditions of 1980s’ US youth crew.  On Frente Al Miedo, Tomar Control’s passionately high-octane delivery remains entirely undimmed, yet their sound continues to incrementally evolve.

Two-step provoking breakdowns and gang choruses remain aplenty, but there is now a notably more pronounced melodicism at play, alongside an increasingly muscular edge.  The band prove equally at home braiding their onslaught with flares of dark melancholy in the vein of Sinking Ships and unleashing metallic-tinged eruptions that call back to early Verse.

The strident Spanish vocals sit notably front and centre of the mix as they explore themes of personal positivity alongside those of environmental collapse and economic exploitation.  Stand-out moments include the contagiously layered vocal climax to the raucous opener Una Vez Más (Once Again), and the tension ratcheting builds of the utterly fierce Extinción (Extinction).

‘Overthinking a thing or two, Thinking my brain and body isn’t right for you, Maybe I might just be losing a screw, Or maybe I’m doing this cause you told me to’ (Confused)

Hailing from Leicester, Sex Germs’ debut full-length is an absolutely rollicking, genre-distorting ride.  Whiplash furiously melds the band’s hardcore punk base with crossover thrash eruptions, garage punk struts, and quirky art punk flourishes before unleashing crushing sludge-mired breakdowns.

Impressively, this febrile shapeshifting feels entirely organic.  In part, this reflects the off-kilter energy that burns throughout.  Equally integral are the irrepressible vocals that match the musical virtuosity step for step as they sweep from sarcasm dripping snarls to just shy of death metal growls, by way of exuberant yelps, without even a moment’s pause.

It won’t surprise that the lyrical themes are equally eclectic.  The pain of anxiety, sexual aggression, the pressure to have children, and the joys of a good veggie lasagne (although the inclusion of aubergines is not without controversy) are all handled with acerbic relish.  The savage oscillations of Choke and the woozily grunge fuelled Drive capture the chameleon essence perfectly.

A fistful of stomp and a gobful of venom?  Welcome to the uncompromising debut self-titled release from Plymouth’s Sneer.

Taut melodies skitter amid the filth-tinged waves of distortion, while the rhythmically barked vocals lock-in with a rhythm section that positively bristles with a menacing swagger.  Flares of dissonant electronics intersperse the tracks, serving only to amplify the intensity of the onslaught as it mercilessly resumes its confrontation with the decaying world around us.

The sheer energy levels that fuel the ten tracks recall the breathless intensity and boisterous bounce of Exit Order but with the added burly velocity of say, The Flex.  It is an enticing combination and one that lands with a particular vigour on the barrelling Second Son and the discordant fervour of Psychic Psychosis, before the more melodically expansive closer Cattle Prod.

‘Regulated by social appeasement, New direction, a correction for sickness, Plead for a cure…and then smile for a quick fix, Why not be you and I’ll be me’ (Self Legislated)

Anyone who has ever had the pleasure of sharing their home with a cat will know that they have an ambivalent attitude towards water at the best of times.  Our dog will plonk herself in the shower without a second thought should the mood take.  Our cat, on the other hand, well…I’m not sure the strikingly vibrant cover art to Cold Shower’s debut 7-inch quite anticipates the scale of the chaos that would ensue.

But Cold Showers’ moniker is, in fact, something of a misnomer.  The Plymouth band deal in urgently energetic, emotionally heartfelt punk.  The guitars are bathed in a warm resonance that seeps over the neatly punchy rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the gruff vocals brim with an unassuming sincerity as they wryly reflect on the pressures of getting through the everyday as well as the undeniable importance of power napping.

The song writing is tightly propulsive, with none of the five tracks even hinting at outstaying its welcome.  Indeed, my personal stand out, the darkly escalating Self Legislated, always leaves me rather longing for just a little bit more…

‘Destruction the solution, war the solution, dereliction the solution, the solution is no solution’ (We Are Making A New World)

Gimic return with a fizzing follow-up to their excellent debut EP, Defer To Hate.  The Bristol band continue to hone their very distinctive clean guitar hardcore that frenetically refracts a myriad of seemingly disparate influences through a Dischord leaning prism without it ever feeling like that it might be an odd thing to do.  Snarled, rasping vocals and a funkily limber rhythm section provide the band’s cornerstone, while the guitar weaves its own intriguingly serpentine path across three tracks that brim with unexpected invention.

The writhing Irrational Demographic kicks proceedings off with its dissection of the polarised echo chambers of much contemporary debate, before Plastic Prison explores how the same dynamic sees us construct our own confinement, building as it does to a fiercely dissonant crescendo.  The flip side sees the more expansive, slow-burn title track take centre stage and it doesn’t disappoint as it dismantles the warped political consensus that has led us to our current malaise.  This is the second press and the cover art is now magnolia upon white.

Frigöra (Release) are a band whose name regularly pierces the mists of hardcore history, shorthand for a rarely matched ferocity.

This retrospective though was my first proper encounter with Frigöra and, even with this forewarning, nothing quite prepared me for the truly unhinged carnage that they unleashed.  It feels as if every sinew of the band was dedicated to pushing their sound to its absolute limits.  The fact that they do not implode in on themselves was not you sense due to any self-restraint, but simply the fact that they physically couldn’t push it any further.

Frigöra emerged from Kawasaki City and were active between 1995 and 1999.  During this period, much Japanese hardcore revelled in its metallic crust influences.  In contrast, Frigöra found their inspirations in Scandinavian hardcore and then took their own interpretation to its very extremities.  Harshly distorted guitars, fiercely raw drums, and desperation shredded vocals are honed into a brutally frenetic, yet skilfully layered, fusillade.  The blistering execution is matched with a lyrical directness as they address themes of war, animal liberation, and capitalist excess.

Fullständig Frigörelse (Complete Liberation) pulls together Frigöra’s entire twenty-seven track discography.  Side One captures their solitary album, 1998’s Dance Of The Plague Bearer, as well as three previously unreleased tracks that include a cover of Mob 47’s Rustning Är Ett Brott (Armour Is A Crime).  The flipside then focuses on the band’s first two releases, their 1995 self-titled EP and their split release with Diskonto from the same year.  The accompanying booklet pulls together the artwork and lyrics – which span English, Japanese, and Swedish – from the original releases.

‘You won’t find us washing with the tides from crowd to faceless crowd, nor dreamless in the mills where years are ground to dust, You won’t find us between white walls, where the lights are always on’ (Gone To Croatan)

‘The darkness before the dawn, It just goes on and on’.   And so goes the savagely primordial howl that heralds the return of Catharsis on the opener Nocturne, a return that is as thoroughly welcome as it is entirely unexpected.  The catalyst was the ever-darkening turn in the US as it accelerates, seemingly without pause, towards authoritarianism.  The poisonous fruit of decades of entrenched socio-economic inequality and the relentless militarisation of civic society are being harvested by a demagogue and his gaggle of opportunists.  For Catharsis, this is a call that could not be ignored.

The band were initially active between 1994 and 2002, before reforming in 2012 to continue to tour in line with their fiercely DIY convictions, with members also being involved in a myriad of other projects, including Requiem, Sect, Trial, and Undying.  Hope Against Hope represents their first new material since 2001’s Arsonist’s Prayer.  Now, normally you could find yourself approaching fresh music after such a lengthy hiatus with trepidation as much as excitement.  Yet, such was the clarity of Catharsis’ musical vision and political conviction, it was hard for me to imagine them coming back as anything other than the Catharsis that so indelibly helped to shape my understanding of what hardcore can achieve.

My confidence was not misplaced.  Hope Against Hope succeeds both in dramatically progressing the band’s musical expression and also conveying a sense that they have never been away – this is simply the organic next step.  Bleakly menacing, structurally ambitious, crust-tinged metallic hardcore continues to form the searing crucible that enables the band to ferment a barrage of unwavering, visceral intensity.  It is one clearly crafted with intent and a characteristically arresting inventiveness.  From the swirling, haunting, almost operatic, backing vocals that unfurl throughout Power, and which are further braided through with solemn violin during Gone To Croatan, to the ominously whispered spoken word of Eremocene and the exuberant melodicism that flares during Last Words, the energy is utterly irrepressible.

Lyrically, the band continue to favour often overtly apocalyptic, darkly allusive imagery, to evoke the consequences of rampant economic exploitation and environmental extraction.  They call on a broadly anarchist framing to explore how alternatives can be realised to nurture a more egalitarian future for humanity.  At the very heart of the album is a tension around the concept of hope.  How is it possible to sustain hope, when there is so little evidence of anything going right?

No easy answers are proffered, but rather there is a recognition that hope is the essential counter to nihilism.  Indeed, the value of hope amplifies as conditions deteriorate and as the need to challenge the sickness increases.  It does not assure victory, but it fights to protect and promote the very idea of what is right.  It is, in fact, a prerequisite to resistance.  In the band’s own words from their 1999 full-length, Passion: ‘But the important thing is to speak, to act, to do something, and let the consequences sort themselves out.  So if we live, let’s live to tread on kings, to break our bodies and our hearts to keep ahead of death, to dance right through our lives’.

‘Your job! Your job! To distract your potential…Your job! Your job! You should never take pride…Every boss in America is a master and slave to his own tragic rise’ (Consumer Talk)

Cleveland’s Knowso return with their third full-length and follow-up to last year’s Pulsating Gore.  The duo are in many respects the living embodiment of what we have come to expect musically from their home city – a wholehearted willingness to contort punk into challenging yet undeniably alluring new shapes.

The core of their sound lies in the tense play-off between the densely taut guitars and the nervously agitated rhythm section that can’t help but provoke barely controllable gyrations.  Amid the urgently angular propulsion, Knowso also find scope to subtly expand their sound from the broodily catchy Perfect For Bleach and Flourescent Pink Vein to the pulsing, synth fuelled choruses of Consumer Talk and Panopticon.

The sardonically acerbic vocals are delivered with a deadpan austerity, but that should not be confused with emotional detachment.  While Pulsating Gore focused on the bitter and unsuccessful battle to unionise Nathan Ward’s (vocals / guitars) workplace, Hypnotic Smack pans out for a wider view.  It conjures a typically absurdist and off-kilter contemplation of how our subservience to the demands of capital continues to distort and pollute the behaviour of both individuals and society at large.

‘All that you believe is a commodity, Everything we touch preys on our psychology, Digital world brings new currency, If there is money to be made then none of us are ever truly free’ (Commodified Life)

Hailing from Pittsburgh, Illiterates continue to draw with relish on the traditions of 1980s’ US hardcore, with more than a passing nod to the youth crew of that era, as well as notable flares of more crossover inspired riffage.  The band’s previous albums, 2023’s No Experts and their 2021 self-titled debut, were blisteringly fast, no-holds barred affairs.  And while Does Not Compute shares the same base pleasures of scorching speed and lusty gang vocals, the band have also afforded themselves a little more room to introduce plenty of brutish mid-paced stomp and it works a treat.

While revelling in the moniker of ‘the dumbest band in hardcore’, the gruffly guttural vocals meld together a satisfyingly concise deconstruction of the modern malaise of political expediency, surveillance capitalism, and corporate virtue signalling, laced with a healthy dose of black humour and a robustly nihilistic vigour.  The twelve tracks crash home in as many minutes and are packed with a succession of standout moments.  From the absolute beast of a riff that defines Remember When to the ferocious contempt of Hold A Grudge, by way of the swaggering climatic breakdown to Read The Room, not a moment is wasted.

‘Everything’s getting less, But costing me more, My cash is running low, No credit anymore’ (Life In The Slow Lane)

As right-wing extremists and ideological grifters marshal huge, flag swathed crowds on to our streets with their toxic tropes that punch down on the already marginalised, it is easy to forget just how much neglect was required to create this poisonous state of affairs.  Well, some forty years of blind obedience to the free market delusion as it happens.  Plenty of time to ravage our social infrastructure, embed insecurity in people’s lives, entrench a doom loop of austerity, and incubate a fertile sense of powerlessness to be exploited.

This Is A War is the second EP from North East England’s Unified Action, and the follow up to their equally excellent self-titled debut.  The utterly bruising title track unleashes an unsparing recognition of the danger posed by people’s increasingly brazen flirtation with the politics of the far right, while the venomously staccato  Life In The Slow Lane and Gatekeeper, with its monstrous slab-like finale, unpick how despair at plunging living standards has been harnessed in the seemingly ever more insidious echo chambers of misinformation.

Across the five tracks, the band ferociously reimagine their 1980s’ hardcore influences.  The onslaught is deftly constructed and studded through with flashes of savage crossover riffage and semi-blast beat eruptions.  It is an uncompromising soundtrack to a nation that is intent on sleepwalking to the precipice of the abyss.

This split 7-inch sees Virginia’s Destruct and Stockholm’s Svaveldioxid in typically uncompromising form as they both contribute two new tracks apiece plus a cover of a track from each other’s discography.

‘Aimless accumulation with no respite, Endless reproduction, Endless night, No man’s atrocity this silent debt of misery’ (Reindustrialised)

Destruct have been in impressively prolific form since the release of their second full-length, 2023’s Cries The Mocking Mother Nature.  They have followed that in quick succession with their contributions to Screaming Death (a four-way split album with Disskerad, Rat Cage, and Scarecrow), To Stop The Conflict (a split 12-inch with Life), and now this latest collaboration with Svaveldioxid.

As ever, the band unleash a battery that brutally melds raw punk with the additional heft of metallic crust.  The d-beat fired rhythm section underpins the unrelenting waves of darkly ominous riffage, while the gutturally roared vocals contemplate how rampant greed continues to fuel environmental collapse and seemingly endless conflict.  Their three tracks include a cover of Krigets Hundar (Dogs Of War) taken from Svaveldioxid’s 2019 album, Dödsögonblick (Moment Of Death).

‘Uppgrävda lik, I krigande länder, Oskyldiga offer, Med bakbundna händer’ (Stillbilder) / ‘Exhumed corpses, In warring countries, Innocent victims, With hands tied behind their backs’ (Still Images)

If there is a band to match Destruct’s creative energies, it is Svaveldioxid (Sulphur Dioxide).  During the decade of their existence, the band have released five albums and a slew of EPs.  Indeed, the band’s sixth album is already slated for release later this year on Phobia Records.

Intriguingly, while the high velocity dynamics of their sound are firmly rooted in Swedish käng, Svaveldioxid’s guitar tone is very much more indebted to the gratifyingly thick buzzsaw that came to define early 1990s’ Swedish death metal.  Yeah, that’s right – Entombed gets the mangel treatment.  Meanwhile, the echo-infused, semi-shouted vocals are immersed in the unremitting horrors of warfare.  Their three tracks also include a reciprocal Destruct cover, namely Two State Solution from 2023’s Screaming Death.

‘Blinding white walls and giant ads, Smells of perfume and processed foods, Plastic shops selling plastic goods, There are the police ready for fun’ (Voice Hunger)

Like many of her counterparts, France currently seems trapped in an inexorable downward spiral, as a refusal to challenge entrenched economic inequality fuels political volatility and encourages an ever more dangerous flirtation with authoritarian panaceas.  Each country has its own particular flavour of conflict, with France’s manifesting itself in the twin cycles of urban social segregation and rural depopulation, while trying to swim against the universal tides of surveillance capitalism and atomising lives.

Brittany’s Toxic Rites have this poisonous cocktail firmly in their sights on this, their self-titled debut EP, as well as recognising the need to avoid nihilism in the face of what seems inevitable.  Yet the soundtrack to this venomous polemic is decidedly English – an absolutely searing reimagination of 1980s’ anarcho-punk.  Strident yet catchy semi-shouted vocals segue between melodic choruses, with just the right hint of theatre, and sneering rat-a-tat-tat rhythmic eruptions.

The tautly surging guitars and martial rhythm section ensure a vehemently contagious atmosphere.  From the searing convulsions of Voice Hunger to the infectious fury of Rural Song, by way of the soaring chorus that defines Take Care, each of the four tracks fizzes with an energy and structural invention that can’t help but make your heart skip just a little quicker.  And an anarcho-punk album that will have you two-stepping in your kitchen? Now that is hard to beat.

‘Glória ao primeiro mundo, pela extinção da desigualdade, onde as lutas do socialism, chegam de tesla na sua cidade, aqui se morre de tédio e de ansiedade’ (Glória) / ‘Glory to the first world, for the extinction of inequality, where the struggles of socialism arrive in your city, here you die of boredom and anxiety’ (Glory)

Naõ (No) released their self-titled debut 7-inch last year and are now back with their first full-length, Obrigada (Thank You).  Sharing members as they do with fellow Bremen-based band Inferno Personale, the sheer velocity of their delivery comes as little surprise.  That said, their palette is a more restrained and stripped back one, fusing together raw 1980s’ Italian hardcore with fuzzed, but not overly distorted, d-beat influences.

From the savagely fluid Obrigada – Todos Querem Dominar O Mundo (Thank You – Everyone Wants to Rule the World) to the rhythmically seething Admirável Mundo Nuvo (Brave New World), the intensity is utterly remorseless yet impressively tight.  The bass punches resonantly through as the waves of riffage unfurl, squalls of fleeting melody deftly flare amid the onslaught.  Meanwhile, the snarled Portuguese vocals lock-in with a howling, exuberant ferocity as they dissect the intersections of class consciousness and the emigrant experience in our increasingly fragmented and technologically ensnared lives.  The strikingly ghoulish cover art rounds things off a treat.

‘Per un moment sento que s’acaba el mon, Erem eterns però ara ja no ho som, No sé com viure si et dic la veritat, Per a no confondre la realitat’ (Eterns) / ‘For a moment I feel like the world is ending, We were eternal but now we are not, I don’t know how to live if I tell you the truth, So as not to confuse reality’ (Eternal)

As the title implies, Col-lecció brings together each of Enemic Interior’s (Enemy Within) three excellent EPs to date – I, II, III – and book ends them with two equally fine new tracks, Mai Més (Never Again) and Fugir Endavant (Flee Forward) for good measure.

The Barcelona’s band sound is one deeply rooted in high intensity, bleakly melodic punk and injected with a notable sense of post-punk drama and flourishes of a boisterous pop sensibility.  The former ensures that an atmosphere of brooding melancholy is conjured, while the latter leavens the gloom with heartily catchy group choruses that will have you singing along in no time, no matter how rusty your Catalan.  The defining heart of the band though lies in the serpentine guitar leads, which readily evoke a surging emotional heft in the vein of Leatherface and Hooton 3 Car.

There is a pleasing continuity that runs through the 18 tracks, but the quality of the song writing also ensures that each track carries its own clear sense of identity.  The lyrics are fractured and darkly poetical as they wrestle with mortality, memory, and trying to make sense of the here and now.  Personal highlights include the shimmering dissonance of Eterns, the elegiac escalation of 100 Tambors (100 Drums), and the raucous fervour of Pilars De La Decadéncia (Pillars Of Decadence).

‘Balas que rompen, El silencio estrellado, Veo a una madre triste, Siento du dolor y lamento, En la ciudad de los vientos’ (Ecos De Chicago) / ‘Bullets that break, The starry silence, I see a sad mother, I feel her pain and lament, In the windy city’ (Echoes Of Chicago)

Fuerza Bruta (Brute Force) return with a new four-track, 10-inch EP, and follow-up to 2023’s full-length, Contra. The Chicago band, who include members of the Brazilian and Mexican diaspora, have been active for the past decade.  Their origins lie in that city’s Oi! punk scene but they refuse to be bound too tightly by the strictures that this might imply.  Ecos De Chicago is, perhaps, best understood as driving, darkly melodic punk, underpinned by a satisfying hardcore rhythmic grit, and a keen eye for a robust group chorus.

The gruff Spanish vocals speak to the devastating consequences of gun violence in their home city and the systematic, state sanctioned violence being executed on the US border with Mexico, before turning to wider tales of living on Chicago’s South Side.  The title track hits home with a particularly bruising vigour, while the closer Lado A Lado (Side By Side) sees fiercely jousting guitars culminate in a burly chant that elicits thoughts of the rather menacing bloke on the front cover, returning home after a particularly gruelling day of plunder and pillage.

‘Muzturren aurrian daukauz, Altza burua ta erantzun, Faxismua goitxik eta behetik, Hartu ta ebai errotik’ (Zatitxu Fatxa Hori) / ‘We are facing the enemy, Raise your head and respond, Fascism from above and below, Take it and cut it off by the roots’ (That Little Fascist)

Hailing from the Basque Country, Zikin (Dirty) already have two albums under their belt, including last year’s Bala Galdua Zure Buru Galduan (A Lost Bullet In Your Lost Mind).  Their first 7-inch, Zatitxu (Small Piece), sees the band continue to hone their well-established core tenets – taut, sinewy guitars, agitated stop-start rhythms, and flares of death rock melodicism.

But these four tracks are delivered with a muscular edge that infuses these constituent elements with an even more pressing velocity.  The urgent Basque vocals match this amplified intensity as they challenge Europe’s fast rising tide of right wing nationalism and the remorseless commercialisation of cultural life.  Yet this ramped up aggression doesn’t dictate that Zikin’s trademark fine detailing is diluted.  From the supple, bouncing mid-song bass lines that propel Zatitxu Fatxa Hori and Trapu Zaharrak (Old Rags), to the gleaming shards of bright, surf-tinged solo that define Gerizpia Iluntzen (The Shadow Is Darkening) it remains very much in evidence.