‘Solace in silence, Downpouring rain, Welcome the nightmare, Mankind enslaved, A final cry, Forgotten corpse smiles as we die’ (Screams At The Sky)

Now, this is an absolute battering ram of a record. The debut album from Philadelphia’s Psych-War is a savage statement in the finest traditions of Swedish hardcore.  The base elements of galloping metallic crust riffage and remorseless d-beat rhythms are, of course, firmly in place.  Yet, it is the sheer unbridled conviction of the delivery that sends you reeling for cover.

There is a really satisfying muscularity to the riffage, while the darkly melodic leads and squalling, blues-fired solos cut through the sonic violence with a piercing clarity.  The roared vocals harshly evoke an apocalyptic vision of endless war and climatic collapse fuelled by imperial delusions and systematic greed.

The barbarous impact is further heightened by the skilful manner in which the band marshal this intensity to reap its full effect – each track hits home with a sledgehammer velocity all of its very own.  The highlights come thick and fast.  From the swaggering brutality of Screams At The Sky to the utterly spiteful riff that defines The Blood, by way of the groove-laden propulsion of Horrendous Stressor, Psych-War leave you nowhere to hide.

‘Claiming to be on the side of right, But so entranced by the spotlight, Enthralled you steal, From mouths you should feed, Taking the moment, From those that need’ (Complete Outsider)

Portland’s Hellshock, having initially made their mark in the noughties, first returned to the fray in 2022 with their self-titled fourth album.  That was their first release in thirteen years, igniting the band’s return to touring, and the next instalment has now arrived in the form of XXV.

The heart of the band’s sound remains rooted in its original stenchcore roots, the gutturally barked vocals, crushing slabs of riffage, and steamroller rhythm section evoking the spirit of early Bolt Thrower with a dark relish.  However, XXV also sees the band continue to build on the more melodic expressions that were first in evidence on Hellshock.  Neocrust melancholy fuels the elegiac aura that is riven through the album, while the soaring solos lean notably more towards NWOBHM inclinations than the thrashier eruptions of the band’s earliest releases.  This impressively organic evolution can, perhaps in part, be attributed to the arrival of Todd Burdette (Tragedy, Nightfell) to partner Brian Hopper in fashioning the band’s dual guitar onslaught.

Hellshock’s evolution is most vividly captured by the funereal melodicism of Dead Hands, the venomous velocity of The Hero Returns, and the bass fuelled swagger of Oblivion.  Lyrically, the band continue to deploy bleakly allusive imagery to explore a society increasingly at the mercy of a corrupt political class and self-serving tech barons.  And it is certainly a timely soundtrack as Portland once again finds itself at the epicentre of resisting America’s increasingly brazen flirtation with the apparatus of authoritarianism.

‘Silhouette, ombre scadenti, sguardi inesistenti, è più facile incolpare chi si ama, che indistinte figure, apprezzare ciò che non esiste’ (Ombre Scadenti) / ‘Silhouettes, decaying shadows, nonexistent gazes, it’s easier to blame those we love than indistinct figures, to appreciate what doesn’t exist’ (Decaying Shadows)

Astio (Hatred) make a thoroughly welcome return with their debut album, Tempio Inganno (Temple Of Deceit), and follow-up to the 2023 EP, Bocche Stanche (Tired Mouths).  Hailing from Trento in northern Italy, Astio fuse rhythmically surging, melodically sombre post-punk with semi-shouted, anarcho-punk leaning vocals to infectious effect.

Conceptually, the album builds on the themes of their debut to construct the notion of Tempio Inganno.  It speaks of the devices, both consciously and subconsciously, that we construct to allow us to turn a blind eye to the realities of our world.  The veil that enables us to ignore that our comfort is frequently rooted in the suffering of others.  A cognitive dissonance that protects us from our own complicity, normalises inequity, and justifies our inaction.

What emerges is an album of starkly competing tensions.  Taut yet fluid, uplifting yet unsettling, an intrinsic conflict further amplified by the warm clarity of the production versus the angular agitations at the heart of Astio’s energy.  Personal highlights include the swirling, almost Middle Eastern-tinged melodies of Poco Di Me Ricordo (I Remember Little Of Myself), the mournful escalation of Carezza Violenta (Violent Caress), and the skronking saxophone lacerations that fuel Astio Totale (Total Hatred).

‘I’ve seen a dead man walking, I’ve seen his heart rot on the vine, I cried for ages trying, Just to shake him outta my mind’ (Dead Man)

Nyx Division are back with the follow-up to their 2022 debut, Dark Star.   Midnight Lights sees the Portland band continue to explore the edgelands of where the uplifting swing of 1980s’ new wave and the melancholic shades of post-punk intertwine and fuse into new forms.  Musically and aesthetically, it is an album that draws with equal relish on both of these influences to conjure a claustrophobic, gothic shrouded tableau.

Beneath the glittering veneer of neon lights and late-night hedonism though lies a much darker reality.  Midnight Lights tells the story of vocalist Domino Monet’s escape from a relationship mired in domestic abuse, and how it is only on breaking free that she has been able to comprehend the resilience and strength that it took for her survive, and to shed the chains of normalised violence.

Mournfully serpentine melodies that morph into boldly strutting metal-tinged solos and a punchily limber rhythm section form the band’s bedrock.  Yet, perhaps, it is the vocals that deliver the defining energy as the waves of catchy hooks and soaring choruses vividly contrast with Monet’s own lived experience.  It is a heady blend of baroque theatre and infectious pop sensibility that comes together to particularly striking effect on the darkly propulsive Dead Man, the defiant euphoria of Soldier Of Love, and the anthemic bombast of Desert Rose.

‘Submit to evil, Makes you feel strong, Slaying the innocent, For flag and freedom, There’s no peace in that’ (Hell On Earth)

Last year’s debut 7-inch from Traumatizer was a lesson in raw, metallic, blown-out sonic violence.  If anything, their searing new five track EP, Nuclear War Machine, is an even more visceral detonation.

The Haarlem band continue to furiously meld thrashing guitars in the vein of Sacrilege with blistering d-beat rhythms and viscously unhinged solos.  Meanwhile, the rasping, fiercely confrontational vocals denounce the brutal horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza, wider global militarisation, and our seemingly inexorable march towards technologically enforced feudalism.

Amid this truly uncompromising onslaught, Traumatizer still find scope to deftly expand their sound. This is, perhaps, most vividly captured by the contagious vocal climax to the title track, the raucous swinging groove of Dead End, and the discordant melodicism that flares during Murder.

‘Don’t like the old, Don’t like the young, I hate middle age, And Metallica’s “One”, Don’t like Idles, Or Mac DeMarco, I haven’t heard ‘em, I like Clarko’ (I Don’t Like Anything)

As you smile at the album’s title, you could be guilty of thinking that the return of Citric Dummies would see them continuing merrily along in the spirit of 2023’s Zen And The Arcade of Beating Your Ass.  And, in many respects, you would be spot on.  This is still rapid-fire melodic punk that bristles with a pugnacious hardcore snap, a raucous garage rock energy, and a deliciously irreverent rock’n’roll swagger.

Yet, it is also different.  There is a discernible increase in the intensity of their delivery – it feels bolder, tighter, and, dare one suggest it, even faster.  When a band’s persona is so rooted in the spirit of satire, it is easy for this to sometimes obscure the quality of their musicianship.  On Split With Turnstile, Citric Dummies robustly ensure that both elements of their music are absolutely to the fore.

From the utterly whiplash opening of I Don’t Like Anything and I Can’t Relate, the Minneapolis band are at full throttle as they sweep onto the solo fuelled climax to I Can’t Stand The Weekend and the wildly careering My Life’s A Total Sham.  This high-octane energy is matched only by their relish at revelling in life’s absurdities, both large and small.  Alienation from the anodyne, weekend nihilism, and soul sapping workplaces all get the treatment, as do the joys of a good Chinese takeaway and, of course, imagining life as a napkin.

‘When they tell us, To play the game, That it all stays the same, Oh, it’s all an act, When we’re told not to relate, That it’s easier to hate, Oh, in a mechanical world’ (Kinetic World)

Alluringly deadpan vocals.  Contagiously crystalline shards of guitar.  Throbbing synths and bass lines.  Crisply sharp percussion.  It is a glacially fluid soundtrack.  Coldly hypnotic, yet also imbued with a strangely comforting warmth, it works its way into your very bones.  It provokes the need to move – not flamboyantly, but with an irresistible precision, nonetheless.

This can only mean the thoroughly welcome return of Memphis’ Optic Sink following their excellent 2023 album, Glass Blocks.  The band continue to meld a sombre post-punk melodicism with looping dance beats to subtly intoxicating effect.  The tautly constructed arrangements belie the rich detailing, a quality shared by the austere vocals as they seamlessly shift intonation as moods almost imperceptibly mutate.

It creates an atmosphere of beguiling uncertainty.  The sense of reality slowly revealing itself manifests itself as the album segues from the limber disquiet of Construction and the sinister unfurling of Don’t Look Down to the pulsing, hopeful urgency of Kinetic World and the languid euphoria of Luxury Of Honesty.  Amid the distorted reflections and fragments of memory, nothing is quite what it seems.  A monochrome, blandly repetitive world seeks to disguise the potential for change and embed that most powerful of lies – what is now, is forever.

‘Маниш так, Ти тінью на стіні граєш, Знову ти мене гукаєш, Темна як спогад, Дика як повінь, Тиха як сповідь, В останній день’ (Темна, як спогад) / ‘You beckon, You play with a shadow on the wall, You call me again, Dark as a memory, Wild as a flood, Quiet as a confession, On the last day’ (Dark As A Memory)

From the bleakly foreboding opening chords to the title track Все по колу, знову (All In A Circle, Again), it is if something primal is stirring.  An ineffable sense of reaching back to the very origins of humanity to understand what drives our seemingly insatiable appetite for war.  Morwan is the solo project of Kyiv’s Alex Ashtaui.  Vse Po Kolu, Znovu is not a direct exploration of the frontline savagery of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, but rather of the insidious psychological consequences that flow from being sucked into the path of such horror.

It speaks to the violent unravelling of what you thought to be immutable, an uncertainty that seems without end, and an existential, unrelenting sense of dread.  It is this very sense of dread that infuses Morwan’s intensely rhythmic post-punk with a notably more muscular dynamic than previously, building on the darker evolution already evident on 2023’s Svitaye, Palaye.

The pounding dance inflected rhythms and droning guitar remain the album’s backbone, while the mournful Middle Eastern tinged melodies and forcefully chanted vocals draw upon Ashtaui’s shared Ukrainian-Arabic heritage to haunting effect.  The intensity is all enveloping from the industrial fuelled Без обличчя (Faceless) to the ominously danceable agitations of Мої дні (My Days) and from the detached menace of Остання мить (Last Minute) to the remorseless escalation of Чорні схили (Black Slopes), before the bleakly mesmeric close of Не чекай (Don’t Wait).  Rarely can the compulsion to dance and to despair at our own future have been so closely intertwined.

‘Thought I would sense that your love was a curse, I kept repeating “It could be worse”, You touch my body like it’s in a hearse, Museum glass ’round a heart set to burst’ (Museum Glass)

Strange Devotion is the second solo album from singer-songwriter Maura Weaver, who first emerged with Cincinatti pop punks Mixtapes, and the follow-up to 2023’s I Was Due For A Heartbreak.  And it continues to see Weaver lace her indie punk inclinations with a jangly yet tantalisingly bittersweet pop sensibility.

As you might anticipate, it is Weaver’s vocals that form the album’s beating heart.  Richly melodic yet also characterfully layered, they deftly see-saw between the tender and the steel of quiet resolution.  They astutely draw on the darkly surrealist imagery of David Lynch’s films to colour a deeply personal narrative that evokes her determination not to allow adversity to overwhelm her life.

However, this is not to underplay the power of the wider songwriting.  Working closely with her longtime collaborator John Hoffmann (of fellow Cincinnati bands, Beef and Vacation), Weaver’s deftly crafted compositions assuredly work their way under the skin.  The warm fuzz of the guitar and crisply understated percussion are enriched with the distinctive twang of the slide guitar together with flares of swirling viola and skronking synths.  Personal highlights include the woozy morphing of Do Nothing, the haunting reflections of the rather beautiful Museum Glass, and the catchily layered Breakfast.

‘Won’t fix the roof, But they’re raising the rent, Bleeding us dry of every last cent, Give us the boot, And just lining their pockets, Won’t even fix electrical sockets’ (Landlord)

With two demos under their belt, Primitive Impulse arrive like a roving pub brawl of wildly swinging haymakers and spilt pints with their debut album, Piss It Away.  This is hardcore punk in its most primeval form – filthy riffs and an even filthier attitude, primed to party or fight, the call is yours.  The Cincinnati band do not look to disguise their love of Poison Idea, either musically or aesthetically.  They do, however, inject their interpretation with an unbridled ferocity and nihilistic vigour that lands with the crunch of a well-timed head butt.

The fiercely guttural vocals, surging riffs, reckless solos, and pounding rhythm section unleash a rabidly raw onslaught that slams home with a particular velocity during the brutal brevity of Landlord, the title track’s venomous breakdown, and the groove fuelled climax to Your Debt.  And beneath the belching belligerence is an uncompromising, clear-eyed denunciation of a society built on worker exploitation, consumer debt, and landlordism, a poisonous cocktail driving people to the very brink of their sanity every day.

‘You’re confused with what you believe and what you know.  In the dark and distracted.  Now do what you’re told. Indoctrination is crippling all the young and the old’ (Indoctrination)

Mason City’s Why Bother? are nothing if not prolific, averaging two releases a year (all on Feel It) since their 2021 debut album, A Year Of Mutations.  And the real kicker, of course, is that they are so prolific that it fuels rather than dampens their creativity.  Whereas some might fall into a groove of flattening repetition, Why Bother? have come to so intrinsically understand the dynamics of their sound, that every release sees them evolve in intriguing new directions.

The fundamentals remain solid and yet are consistently flexed into eerily atmospheric new shapes.  Lo-fi garage punk is woven through with a decidedly off-kilter pop sensibility.  Then the languidly drawled vocals, hazily hallucinogenic synths, and darkly surreal lyrics shroud proceedings in a surprisingly unsettling gothic reverie.

The cover art – Vanitas by 17^th century painter Philippe de Champaigne – sets the tone perfectly for Case Studies with its spectrally allusive lyrical meditations on mortality, time, and how our understanding of them is shaped by our belief systems.  It is thoroughly evocative journey and as it morphs from the catchily cosmic fuzz of In Between The Distance to the ominously languorous Feeding The Birds, and then the brittle melodicism of Still Remain, it consistently drops a shimmying shoulder to leave our expectations floundering in its wake.

‘When it comes time to make stand, Will you theorise and obfuscate and say we don’t understand, When it comes time to make a stand, Do you think you can?’ (Affirmative Denial)

As your hips are insidiously lured into ill-advised gyrations, you find yourself wondering what element of JJ And The A’s fizzing armoury has provoked the manic grin spreading across your face.  Is it the cavorting anarchy of the organs? The contagiously whiplash rhythms? The energetically febrile vocals?  Of course, it’s all three as they were moulded into a rollicking carnivalesque fury.

JJ And The A’s have honed their craft across two cracking EPs, 2023’s self-titled debut and last year’s Eyeballer.  Both were defined by an unquenchable, irrepressible energy and I did wonder quite how this would translate to a full album.  I needn’t have worried as it has enabled the Copenhagen-based band to subtly expand their sound without in anyway diluting their velocity.  The closest proxy I can conjure is the darkly hedonistic spirit of The World/Inferno Friendship Society doused in SoCal punk vigour, with a healthy dash of extra hardcore stomp.

Each track delivers a slap to the face of a singular intensity, with the bristling In Vogue, the fabulously unhinged Needles, and the frenetically bouncing The Wraith, my personal highlights.  Amid these raucously uplifting eruptions, the ever-shapeshifting vocals cast a blackly wry eye over the state of the world from sweatshop exploitation and the inauthenticity of curated lives to the poisonous legacies of deindustrialisation and colonial oppression.

‘Fire is not that with whose flame the candle laughs, Look to the moths and where they gather’ (Taken from the writings of 14^th century Persian poet, Hafez)

Ameretat are a duo drawn from the Iranian diaspora, with both bandmembers still having family living in Iran.  This album though is rooted in a much broader interpretation of what it is to be of the Iranic people, a shared cultural and linguistic heritage that spans throughout west and south Asia.  It draws on the folklore of the region through verse and writings in Avestan, Kurdish, Luri, and Persian to explore living in the shadow of the theocratic tyranny that governs modern-day Iran.  Ameretat itself is the Avestan word for indestructible and the deity representing immortality, or perhaps more accurately, the eternal cycle of life and death in Persian mythology.

The fierce sonic accompaniment is one rooted in the driving rhythms of metallic crust and harshly duelling anarcho-punk inspired vocals.  This onslaught is then braided through with Iranic folk instrumentation so deftly that it conjures a deeply evocative atmosphere, which is not only intensely mesmerising but also feels utterly intrinsic.

The sweeping propulsion – which is primed by the haunting Ghazal-e-ātish (Ode To The Fire) – dictates that the album evolves as almost two seamless movements.  From the swirling rhythms of Posht-e-pardeh (Behind The Veil) to the sombre escalation of Koshtan-e ye Sag-e-āb (The Killing Of A Sacred Water Dog), and from the venomous climax to Mohnate Digarān (The Hardship Of Others) to the euphoric violence of Deyr-e-kharāb (Broken Monastery / Ruined World), before the choral finale of Jamal Jamaloo, Ameretat’s grip is absolutely unrelenting.

‘Te levantas y vas al baño y miras tu rostro, Y sabes que ese rostro no es el tuyo, Sabas que la que esta frente a tí no erec túm, Es un cuerpo extraño’ (Cenizas En El Rostro) / ‘You get up to go to the bathroom, You look at your face in the mirror, And you know that the person in front of of you, Isn’t you, It’s a foreign body’ (Ashes On The Face)

The debut album from London’s Traidora, Una Mujer Trans Sin País (Trans Woman Without A Country) is as raw as it comes, both sonically and thematically.  The rabid rhythms of Latin American punk are melded with searing metallic crust, amid flares of death metal inspired riffage, and harshly blackened Spanish vocals.  It is a truly unforgiving battery that reaches its zenith on the brutally uncompromising Disforia Eterna (Eternal Dysphoria) and the anarcho-punk infused Cenizas En El Rostro and Dónde Estás? (Where Are You?).

While Traidora has evolved into a four piece for this release, it initially began as the solo project of vocalist, Eva Leblanc, a Venezuelan trans woman, who released her debut 7-inch Un Cuerpo Trans Lleno de Odio (A Trans Body Full Of Hate) in 2023.  The lyrics remain deeply personal, a stark and, at times, harrowing exploration of the dysphoria that has shaped her life and the systematic prejudice that has confronted her as a trans woman and emigrant, as well as the wider struggles of the Mapuche and Palestinian peoples.

The album serves as a salutary reminder of the need for hardcore to continue to evolve and enable new perspectives and lived experiences to be explored.  Of how even now seminal bands, such as say Los Crudos, have had to wrestle for initial acceptance, initially being deemed by some to be overly confrontational.  Una Mujer Trans Sin País is Traidora’s powerful call for the right to be heard.

‘Al pasar los días, la ciudad despierta, Y se encuentra un cuerpo que tan solo apesta, Al “Azul Pastel” le dan una medalla, Y en la nota roja solo se comenta’ (Azul Pastel) / ‘As the days pass, the city wakes up, And a body is found that only stinks, “Pastel Blue” is given a medal, And the crime news only comments’ (Pastel Blue)

Welcome to a city of ghosts.  A city stalked by the spectres of lost futures.  A city steeped in a languid sense of decay, one fermented by entrenched corruption, punctured by eruptions of police violence.  A city that isolates and intimidates.  Yet the desire to break free from suffocating traditions and build something different is tangible, its beat growing stronger everyday.  Welcome to 1980s’ Mexico City.

Las Ánimas Del Cuarto Obscuro (The Souls Of The Dark Room) were short-lived, self-releasing just this their 1988 debut album, before morphing into Las Animas, the solo project of vocalist Antonio Sánchez Uribe.  The core of the band’s sound is rooted in the melancholic essentials of contemporary post-punk yet imbued with elements that root it very much in its era, from the quirkily skittering keys to the gleaming sheen of the solos.

There is also a definite sense of experimentation, of a band grappling with how best to forge their competing influences into a coherent sound, unencumbered by any sense of convention.  This leads to some intriguing contrasts from the infectiously surging Puebla Fantasma (Ghost Town), the sombrely serpentine Aperecida (Appeared), and the gothic-tinged Azul Pastel (Pastel Blue) to the off-kilter fragility of Samarkanda (Samarkand) and La Mosca (The Fly), before the languorously expansive closer, Hasta Luego (See You Later).

Breathing new life into this lost classic of Mexican post-punk has been something of a labour of love for La Vida Es Un Mus.  And we are now rewarded for this patience and persistence with what is a thoroughly beguiling, deeply atmospheric album.

‘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).