‘And carried by the wind, Forgotten screams, None are sovereign or reigned, All lost like a dream’ (The Moon)

Waves crashing against the cliff face.  The wind howling as if nature itself has been betrayed.  Banks of fog rolling relentlessly into shore, swamping the isolated abbey that stands upon the headland. Regrettably, I’ve never had the chance to visit Whitby, where Bram Stoker’s Dracula first comes to shore in North East England. But, if you were looking for a soundtrack to that most unsettling passage, Altar Of Eden would absolutely nail it for you.

This is the Austin trio’s third album, 2021’s Chimeras lurking in the shadows between Volumes I and II of The Grotto Screams.  Many contemporary interpretations of post-punk come with a bombastic sheen that is increasingly distant from the DIY origins from which they were born.  There are no such reservations with the Altar Of Eden, who feature members of Hologram, Institute, and latter day …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead amid their ranks.

They continue to strip their death rock fuelled sound down to its very essence.  The supple, elastic bass lines sit resonantly front and centre, interplaying with the crisply resolute percussion.  The guitar weaves its own mournful tapestry, brittle and skeletal yet insidiously catchy.  Meanwhile, the gothic drawls and sombre murmurs conjure themes of decay and rebirth, light and shadow into a deeply atmospheric lament.

Subtle shifts in texture carry all the more weight due to the austere restraint of the wider palette.  As you are embraced by the serpentine drive of Nocturno, the spartan solemnity of The Erasure (I love the drama of the climatic change of pace), and the ominous fervour of Eternal, you can’t help but sense the darkness descending.

‘Vendo il mio tempo, non ho scelta, giorni che spariscono, sogni che svaniscono, nulla mi emoziona più, il capitalismo uccide, ti mangia l’anima’ (Vendo Il Mio Tempo) / ‘I sell my time, I have no choice, days that disappear, dreams that vanish, nothing excites me anymore, capitalism kills, it eats your soul’ (I’m Selling My Time)

Until Every Flag Is Burned is the debut album from Hemiptera, following on from their 2024 demo.  It sees the Brighton band continue to hone their rampaging, cello fuelled melodic crust.  The core is built around the darkly metallic heft of the guitar and the galloping intensity of the rhythm section. This scaffolding is then draped in the swirling, mournfully evocative melodicism of the cello.  It elicits in equal measure a melancholic despair at where we find ourselves and a fiercely defiant hope that all is not yet lost.

The vocals, alternating between English and primarily Italian, seamlessly segue between guttural roars and solemn spoken word.  The second track, Tragedy of The Ego, represents the albums lyrical fulcrum, drawing on the work of Errico Malatesta, a leading Italian anarchist activist and thinker at the turn of the 20^th century.  It frames the wider album as it confronts the ravages of a political system that valorises capital over human dignity.

The sombre intro to the searing opener, Vendo Il Mio Tempo (I’m Selling My Time), sees cello braided through neo-classical guitar and primes the ensuing onslaught to perfection.  Highlights including the seething oscillations of Roaches, including the haunting mid-song chant, and the emotionally charged escalation of Notti Nere (Black Nights), while Materasso (Mattress) rather aptly sees a blistering vocal contribution from Morrow’s Alex CF.

‘With passion, I lead with what makes me bleed, With pleasure, I let my heart beat, And with pain, I sit with my comfort, Even if it hurts, It only gets worse’ (Pain)

Soastasphrenas is derived from the Greek for ‘peace of mind’.  Berlin’s Soastasphrenas aim to deliver anything but, on this their follow-up to 2023’s Moirae.  This is abrasive, densely textured emoviolence, precariously balancing all the competing dynamics that this entails.  Unhinged chaos versus technical precision, whiplash tempo changes versus muscular grooves, discordant immersion versus fleeting melodic reflection.

The frequently layered vocals add to this claustrophobic unease as they sweep from harsh screams to disembodied whispers, by way of almost clean sung incantations.  Equally central to this almost overwhelming intensity, is the poem that is braided throughout the album.  The recitals of 150 people were recorded, layered over one another, and then played at different volumes to create a thoroughly unsettling feeling of voices constantly crowding out your own thoughts.

Conceptually, Eris (referencing the Greek goddess of strife and discord) is built around the emotional intersection of passion, pleasure, and pain. This examination provokes a pervasive sense of dread that no matter how bad things have got, the worst is still to come.  It is one that insidiously permeates throughout the album as it unfurls.  From the savage convulsions of This Is Not to the cathartic dissonance of Even If It Hurts, tracks bleed indiscriminately into one another, ensuring that there is not a moment’s respite from the visceral saturation.

‘A incógnita, un pequeno brote nun esgallo leñoso, en días sen choiva e sen sol, Unha esperanza vana, pero unha esperanza polo menos, Un pequeno agarre en caída libre, pero un agarre polo menos’ (Letargo) / ‘The unknown, a small sprout on a woody branch, on days without rain and without sun. A vain hope but hope at least. A little grip in free fall, but a grip at least’ (Lethargy)

The Galicia region of Spain has long been a fertile region for experimental crust and Tenue (Faint) have been at the forefront of building on the early 2000s’ legacy of pioneers such as Ekkaia, Ictus, and Madame Germen.  Following on from 2021’s Territorios (which is, essentially, a single-track album), the band return with their third and most ambitious full-length yet, Arcos, Bóvedas, Pórticos (Arches, Vaults, Gateways).  Originally released in 2024, this is the recent second pressing.

Their sound is a fiercely crafted fusion of melodic crust and emoviolence, bound tightly together by shared blackened impulses and not entirely averse to leaning into a certain early 1990s’ emo melodicism.  Lyrically, the band continue to explore an everyday anarchism.  It is one that rejects ‘the politics of the ubiquitous enemy’ and recognises the value of what we can achieve through collective endeavour and community action.

From the outset, you know to leave any pre-conceived expectations at the door as a woozy late night jazz trumpet interplays with gently strummed acoustic guitar and harsh shrieks before Inquietude (Unease) erupts fully into view.  It unfurls in a majestic assemblage of frantic riffage, metallic heft, and trumpet laced introspection.  Distracción (Distraction) similarly embodies the band’s dexterity in marrying galloping velocity with flourishes of unexpected, beguiling reflection.  While the uplifting, rousing fervour of Enfoque (Focus) reaffirms the deep-seated sense of hope that permeates the album, the kernel of our resistance.

‘Killing myself, Just to get by, Buy a dream, Sold a scam, Work all day, Don’t give a damn’ (Fucked Life)

Now, this is a record that does exactly what it says on the tin.  New Jersey’s Direct Order ’82 are taking us back to the formative USHC of the early 1980s.   All scrappy speed, spit and snarl, without even a sniff of mosh.  And, you’ve guessed it, they’ve crammed twelve songs onto this debut release, which they rattle through in under 10 minutes.

Even more importantly, it is homage to hardcore’s roots that is delivered with a raw verve and passion.  This is, perhaps, unsurprising for a band featuring members of Ammo and Ensign.  The lyrical concerns are similarly straight for the jugular as they tackle right wing extremists, economic inequality, police brutality, and the dangers of letting life slip through your grasp.  The choppy Nuke Me and the frenetically melodic Leave Me Alone hit home with a particular snap.

‘Left right, one two, Marching at the same pace, All within one grave, We will find our place’ (Rzeź)

This is the self-titled debut 7-inch from Warsaw’s Klątwa (The Curse).  Featuring members of Contra La Contra and Government Flu, it sees them draw with an equal relish on mid-1980’s Polish hardcore and classic Scandinavian d-beat influences, before refashioning them through a subtly more metallic lens.  It proves a distinctly powerful blend.

The opener Sam (Alone) closes with a savagely choppy breakdown, while Rzeź (Slaughter) is defined by an absolute brute of a riff.  The flipside kicks off with the frenetic intensity of Zew (The Call), before closing with Symulacja (Simulation), which features guest vocals from Träume’s Dorka deftly woven through the bristling chorus.

Amid the searing riffage, fleetingly flaring solos, and breakneck rhythms, the snarled Polish vocals contemplate their sense of isolation in a world once again teetering on the edge of mass militarised bloodshed.

‘The counterfeit ambitions, The collaborators shill, Is used as ammunition, While your frontal lobe is shelled’ (Digital Rot)

Drones circle the sky, while armoured police cars patrol the streets, and paramilitaries forcefully enforce stop and searches, all while under the all-seeing eye of batteries of CCTV cameras.  The seeds of military occupation boomeranging back to enforce domestic control.  It would be terrifying, had we even noticed.  But we’re all too busy, glued to our screens, behaviours and thoughts being scraped for others to monetise and to feed the surveillance machine.

L.O.T.I.O.N. Multinational Corporation are back, once again mining the rich connections between technology, militarisation, and capitalism.  Machine Hallucinations is the New York band’s fourth full-length since their 2015 debut album, Digital Control And Man’s Obsolesence. In something of a rare phenomenon, each of their albums has been even better than its already excellent predecessor.

They have achieved this progression very much through incremental evolution, deftly introducing new elements to complement their resolutely early 1990s’ industrial base.  Fiercely metallic riffage and darkly pulsing electronica are skilfully interwoven with dance fuelled rhythms and anthemic choruses.  This ability to seamlessly marry the harsh and the abrasive with the ineffably catchy and the downright infectious lies at the very heart of their sound.

An unsettling instrumental intro in collaboration with Igor Cavalera primes the atmosphere perfectly, before Celebrate The Suffering is unleashed in its full clanking glory – all together now… ‘On your knees, On your knees, Get on your knees, As they celebrate the suffering’.  And from that point the intensity doesn’t drop for even a moment.

The slab like riffs and choral chants of Absolute Insanity.  The escalating fervour of Boots On The Ground, ethereal backing vocals intertwining with the thumping percussion and demonically distorted ‘Left, Right, Left, Right’ mantra.  The utterly fervent agitations of Never Say Never in collaboration with synth punks La Pregunta?.  Before the uproariously melodic Five Star General (Of My Heart), which features Lulu of Fairytale and brought the house down when L.O.T.I.O.N. laid waste to London a couple of years back, brings the album to a surprisingly upbeat climax.

‘Fossilized city of mass execution, Scarred in the fog among graves, Twisted visions of primal militias, Burning down the nomadic maze’ (Dulling The Blade)

I’m not sure I’d be courting too much controversy to suggest that Slayer have been a foundational inspiration for Paranoiac.  Of course, Slayer have helped to shape many bands in the more metallic leaning spheres of hardcore, but few wear this influence with such heart on sleeve clarity.  And the strength of this commitment holds the Los Angeles band in good stead.  It allows them to assuredly call with equal relish on the blistering ferocity of Reign In Blood and the sheer atmospheric intensity of South Of Heaven, together with their own bristling hardcore fuelled energy, to introduce a powerfully fresh dynamic to this classic sound.

The first three tracks are drawn from the band’s 2023 demo, Morbid Psycho, and the three on the flipside are brand new tracks.  The opener, Devil’s Door, is a perfect example of the band’s approach, opening with brutal velocity, before snapping into a muscular groove, and then closing out with a savagely squalling solo.  Across the balance of the album, they continue to deftly marshal these constituent elements to striking effect. The seething convulsions of Midnight Heat hit home particularly hard, though my personal highlight is, perhaps, Mental Laceration.  It is built around a vivid reimagining of the ominously chiming opening to South Of Heaven, a riff to make the hairs on the back of your neck stand tall.

Targeted Solution is the debut album from Calgary’s Grotto.  Fast and tight, gnarly and twisting, yet also densely textured and drenched in a suffocating, desperate urgency.

For all its intrinsic directness, it evokes a fiercely claustrophobic atmosphere, one that pulses with unease and anxiety.  The cleanish guitars are tense and taut but certainly don’t lack for muscularity.  The flourishes of discordant melody, which often emerge almost as palate cleansing interludes, are powerfully effective.  Hauntingly evocative, they also serve to deftly amplify the intensity of the wider onslaught.

The rhythm section maintains a fluid suppleness amid the frenzy, while the caustically enraged vocals rabidly dissect our fever dream of paranoid delusions, wilfully distorted realities, and institutionalised double speak.  From the manic opening of Thermally Annihilated, the battery is an unforgiving one, as it careers from the searing contortions of Lead Me (To Paradise) to the dissonance laced title track, by way of the frenetic grooves of Black Imp.

The result is feral and feverish in equal measure.  Imagine, perhaps, the abrasive viscosity of Memory Ward or Second Death fused with a more avowedly burly 1980s’ USHC influence and you won’t be too far wide of the mark.

‘Draga! Za roke se drživa, Da v morju trupl, Se ne zgubiva, Jutr je praznik!’ (Darila) / ‘Darling! Let’s hold hands, So that we don’t get lost in the sea of ​​corpses, Tomorrow is a holiday!’ (Gifts)

Hailing from Ljubljana, Poguba (Ruin) make their vinyl debut with this six-track EP, Noč (Night).  And brace yourself, you’re in for a treat.  The opening two salvos, the title track and Darila, are rapid fire eruptions of frantic, noise drenched hardcore.  The band then sell us the most unexpected shimmy as they cover The Cure’s Hočm Bit Str (I Want To Be Old), locking into a mid-paced groove braided through with its mournful motif melody and desperately forlorn, crooned vocals.

This melodic flourish is not revisited, but the gothic aesthetic once invited over the threshold, is not for leaving.  It insidiously permeates the three tracks on the flipside, bringing to the fore the band’s dark Yugo punk inspirations.  They unfurl in a contagious squall of bleakly comedic tirades, darkly drawled spoken word, and stomping rhythms.  Tank and Lublana both work rather well, although my personal highlight is Maximum R’N’R as it loses itself in a swirling vortex of rasping vocals, Gregorian chants, and crashing cymbals.

‘To the misty Wadden, Where the cold winds blow? Haven’t been to all islands, But they’re on the list, Do you hear the curlew call? Deep down in the mist?’ (Not Enough)

It is always pleasing to encounter fellow appreciators of our great seabirds, even if they overlook the mighty cormorant.  This German duo, who hail from Hagen, not only name themselves after a seabird (renowned for its habit of ejecting a notably pungent oil), but their opening track also contemplates cosmically empowered terns.

This is the duo’s debut full-length and follows a slew of splits and 7-inch EPs over the past decade.  It is a languidly beguiling treat – lo-fi, brittle, contagiously melodic.  The rhythmic heart of their sound is based around the strummed guitar and the crisply metronomic drumming.  This proves the scaffolding for the duos keen ear for the type of mournfully languorous melody that is almost impossible to shake off.  At times, this is delivered by brightly chiming guitar, at others by bracing flares of synth.

Meanwhile, the gently murmured, nasally high-pitched vocals are a wispy, delicately restrained presence as they contemplate life’s important questions: Can you conjure Blackbeard’s ghost?  What makes aquarium fish happily horny? How long is long enough at the beach?  From the coiling guitar and tinkling keys of Space Tern to the dissonantly enticing synth finale to Children Of The Wind, and then from the more strident He’s Got The Cross to the quietly entrancing Into The Circle, the palette is an economic one. Yet, this economy is one that The Fulmars marshal with a subtle, mesmerising dexterity.

‘A scar across the land, A blister burning with the crimes of history, Shackled to corrosive force, inherited wealth and corrupt law, Kneeling and bending and snivelling’ (In The Yolk)

I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little excited for this one.  Both of Gimic’s fiercely inventive EPs left me keen for more.  Just as the heartfelt conviction of their live shows never failed to refresh, the equivalent of being doused in icy water on exiting hot and sweaty from the underground during this furnace of a summer.  And have no doubt, New Traditions unequivocally delivers on these hopes.

Gimic’s distinctive clean guitar hardcore is built around three integral elements.  At times each can almost seem to be exploring their own path, but then they all come together with a snapping synchronicity.  First, the brightly lean guitar, which tautly writhes in one moment and then fleetly dances in the next.  A limber rhythm section that brings a funky dexterity to bear and yet, without ever overindulging, is more than capable of matching the intricacies of the guitar when demanded.  And, finally, vocals that spit out each and every word with a raw, passionate clarity as they dissect a society ripe for exploitation by opportunist grifters and hidebound by a failed political consensus, its social contract in tatters.

Throughout, the Bristol band tease and stretch their influences into new shapes, refracting them their magpie instincts primarily through the lens of 1980s’ Washington DC hardcore, and rarely straying from the disciplines of sub-two-minute song craft.  That said, the album’s centrepiece is undoubtedly the more expansive, slow burn of the title track itself – the passage when the drums drop out and cleaner sung vocals, cracked with emotion, intertwine with the mournfully coiling guitar is simply killer.

Either side of this, the pleasures are more directly abrasive and no less satisfying for it.  The searing urgency of Read The Rune and the supple contortions of Dark, Darker set the tone.  Before, the one two of Begging To Die – with its mesmerising bass line – and the deft juxtaposing of skittering guitar and barked disdain on Disintegrate seal the deal.

Grab your air guitar and rev your imaginary motorbike.  Next, fill a bucket with spit, sweat, and lager (blend to taste) and pour it over your head.  Right, you’re ready for Hot Load.

The band name. The song titles. The aesthetic.  They all point in one direction and one direction only.  And when you wear your heart on your sleeves so brazenly, there really is a pressure to live up to the billing.  And that Hot Load do in spades.  This is hardcore that wants to rock.  And to do so in the sleaziest, sweatiest, most beer soaked way imaginable.

As with their 2025 debut, 2025’s Fate Unknown, their second full-length draws on punk and metal influences with an equal relish and then fashions them into something even more decidedly unwholesome.  The riffs are muscular, the blues-tinged solos extravagant, the bass lines filthy, and the rhythms swaggering, while the growled vocals rabidly indulge their love of life’s baser pleasures.

Personal highlights are the feral Exotic Weapon – where the band really lean into their thrashier instincts – as well as the sheer unbridled rock’n’roll gusto of Widowmaker and the unhinged d-beat of Salvo.   As you will have gathered, the Los Angeles band, who share members with Cemento and Death Rites, don’t really deal in subtlety.  But you know what?  That can feel a rather overrated virtue when an album hits home with the unabashed, instinctual velocity of Realized.

‘Odje je aktors iz sjene bit će uplakanih lica, Jer lagedan je živet ugladenih varalica’ (Ukopani) / ‘Where the actors come from the shadows, there will be tearful faces, Because the life of polished deceivers is easy’ (Buried)

As much as I enjoyed Indikator B’s 2024 self-titled debut 7-inch, I must admit that, initially at least, it wasn’t one that I returned to with a religious regularity.  Then, I caught them on their UK tour last May and suddenly everything came together for me, with an entirely refreshed resonance.  Better late than never.

The Zagreb band are now back with their follow-up four track EP, II.  Their approach continues to be defined by a taut focus that is easy to mistake for simplicity.   The song craft is lean, fast, and underpinned by a powerful yet restrained rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the vocals bring a drawled, desperation shrouded detachment to bear as they contemplate a society mired in corruption and cast in the shadow of squandered lost futures.

The key lies, perhaps, in the deftly understated use of darkly sombre melody in both the riffs and the vocals.  It imbues these tracks with a coldly melancholic atmosphere that elicits memories of the austerity that defined 1980s’ Eastern European hardcore.  The frenetic intensity of Ovdje, Baš Tu (Here, Right Here) and the choppily surging Zadnja Stanica (Last Station) get proceedings underway.  The flip side then sees the anarcho-punk fuelled opening to Iza Rešetaka (Behind Bars) evolve into a dramatically assertive crescendo, before things then slow a touch for the bleakly brooding finale of Ukopani.

‘Queimar o passado, Inflamar o presente, Explodir o futuro, Recriar! Destruir todas as jaulas’ (Jaulas) / ‘Burn the past, Ignite the present, Explode the future, Recreate! Destroy all the cages’ (Cages)

Prisão (Prison) return with their third EP, Nação (Nation), and follow-up to their self-titled 2024 7-inch.  These six tracks see the Stockholm-based band continue to forge catchy, groove-laden hardcore that is free from frippery and all about the power and intensity of the riff.

The rhythm section locks in with a resounding power but resolutely refuses to overplay, giving space for the riffage to fully unfurl.  Meanwhile, the fiercely gruff Brazilian Portuguese vocals eschew any extravagance, their frank directness matching the ferociously honed clarity of the wider onslaught.

Echoing the band’s name, the lyrics tackle themes of social confinement – those we love, where we live – as well as the hypocrisy underpinning the current wave of military escalation.  Personal highlights are the jagged lacerations of Amar Sem Amarras (Love Without Strings) and the stomping brutality of the closer, Jaulas.

‘Everyone subscribes, Everybody’s fighting for a voice, To repeat the lie, Shattering, Clamoring, Capital realized’ (Specks)

Non Plus Temps are an Oakland based collective whose members share a tangled ancestry across a myriad of Bay Area projects including Famous Mammals, Naked Roommate, Preening, and The World.  As this pedigree would suggest, they lean toward the more experimental edgelands of post-punk, forging the most unexpected connections between the jarringly dissonant and the downright infectious.

This is their second full-length, following up their 2022 debut, Desire Choir.  It unfurls with an undulating, shimmering unpredictability that is impossible to readily pigeonhole and that seethes with an improvisational vitality.  The only guarantees are that it will make you want to move.  That said, your body may never be entirely comfortable that it is going in quite the right direction.

NPT weave an ever-reformulating tapestry of skronking sax, stabbing guitar, jarring synths, cavorting piano, and spryly undersated percussion.  It is one that consistently challenges expectation, without ever veering into self-indulgence, as songs assertively emerge, disassemble, and then put themselves back together again often as something rather subtly different.

The vocals similarly morph in character as they segue from drawled observations to semi-shouted tirades by way of spectrally narrated monologues and altogether more melodic expressions.  Their lyrical observations are wryly allusive as they unpick the nature of the poisonous hegemony that currently governs our lives.  The notion that value is only accrued through monetisation and that valorises capital accumulation over every other facet of existence.

As the album unfurls, it sucks you into it into its embrace with an immediacy that belies its underlying complexity.  The pulsating, squalling bounce of Heads Of State.  The hauntingly serpentine, sax fired Written In Fits.  The intoxicating, dub drenched De Chirico Desert.  The beguiling skeletal piano and martial beats of A Certain Degree. The languidly discordant Saw The Cars Free. Immerse yourself in the Conditional Bunker and you will be richly rewarded.

‘Trepass lands, Keep out they said, Whoever owns this land, Owns it until heaven and hell’ (Trespass To Land)

Trespass is the fourth album from CIA Debutante, a Franco-Australian duo comprising Paul Bonnet on electronics and Nathan Roche on guitar / vocals.  Their template of sombrely narrated vocals and darkly dissonant electronic soundscapes is well established, but Trepsass arguably represents the fullest realisation of their bleakly evocative sonic imaginary.

The electronics form the bedrock, segueing from fiercely pulsing grooves to eerily immersive excursions, nurturing an atmosphere that is equal parts gothic horror and futuristic dystopia.  Mist smothered ruins morphing into desolate, barren wastelands and back again.  They are interwoven with flaringly abrasive guitar and mournfully swirling eddies of clarinet, while underpinned by the resolutely motorik percussion that builds the more propulsive energies that first came to the fore on their last album, 2023’s Down, Willow.

In the meantime, Roche conjures his darkly evocative recitals.  A fragmented, absurdist poetical commentary that toys and ruminates with a detached regret at our current trajectory.  Trespass To Land lures you assuredly into this vortex, a grip that the slow burn escalation of Came Across A Potter only tightens.  From there, the uneasy agitations of Flesh Microchip Repair and hypnotically discordant Spill only suck us deeper into contemplating this doomed road we seem compelled to travel.

‘Austerity measures for the citizens, Mass deportations of “Illegal Aliens”, Build their walls, build their bombs, Can’t build nothing to save humanity’ (Anti-Climax)

We live in an age of dangerous democratic deficit.  Our system of politics has been subverted to serve the interests of capital, moulding the system to serve its needs at the expense of all others.  A self-serving cartel that limits debate to a predetermined technocratic consensus and disenfranchises the many, sowing the seeds of powerlessness for extremists to exploit.

Hailing from Chicago, Mock Execution tear into this stitch-up with an unbridled ferocity on their latest 12-inch and follow-up to 2023’s Circle Of Madness.  They continue to hone a raw punk battery that draws on the influence of 1980s’ UK crust pioneers and their Japanese crasher crust successors with equal proclivity, while infusing their own distinctively psychedelic melodic spicing.

The dual flanged-out guitars unleash surging waves of metallic riffage, leaning towards being blown-out yet retaining a thoroughly satisfying muscularity.  Meanwhile, the bruising, cymbal awash low-end rhythm section injects a surprisingly catchy swing, linking up in fierce synchronicity with the frantically rhythmic vocals.

Each of the five tracks is a savagely coiled eruption.  I love the crunching riffage of Freedom For Sale, the squalling solo that flares during the manic Ain’t A Hope In Hell, the anarcho-fuelled vocals of Defiant Pose, and the choppy fury of You Gotta Be Obscene (To Be Heard).  But, the killer blow is arguably delivered by the sledgehammer grooves of the closing track, Anti-Climax.

‘Guests dig their graves, With forks and knives, Laughter turns to fighting, Just to feel alive’ (Party’s Over)

This is the debut album from Democracy and follow-up to their 2021 demo, Western Relaxation.  For recording purposes, the band comprises a duo whose roll call of projects includes Fashion Change, Innuendo, Nasti, and Necron 9.  And that pedigree gives you a pretty decent handle on what to anticipate – raw, filthy, desperately fast hardcore.

Even amid the lacerating riffs and burly rhythms, the sheer bleakness of the vocals catches you a little off guard.  A blackened spew, they drip with disgust at a society sleepwalking into ever more entrenched social oppression and climatic degradation.

The band control the dynamics of this merciless onslaught with an impressive dexterity.  The stomping antagonism of Menace To Society and the limber instrumental, Healing II, deftly offset the rabid violence of cuts such as Cold Deep Water and the title track.  Before Primal State brings proceedings to a suitably crushing finale.

‘Hope dies, My fates been sewn, Settling into my grave, I was stroking your hair of snake, That morning I was flesh and bone, By night I had turned to stone’ (Turned To Stone)

Porcelain Doll is the first 7-inch from Excess Blood.  The Portland trio, who feature Trae Brown of Electric Chair, continue to revel in the propulsive, mournfully shimmering death rock that defined their self-titled 2024 demo.  A gothically shrouded world of roses, graves, and darkening skies, but one that also seethes with a combative intent that belies its themes of loss, regret, and the unrequited.  Think, perhaps, Human Trophy meets Koridor but with a dash of additional hardcore grit and that would be about right.

The title track kicks things off, brooding melancholy soon morphing into a surging escalation, before the barrelling Cathedral Park sees the drawled baritone of the lead vocals duelling with an altogether more abrasive support.  My personal highlight is the darkly chiming, densely layered Turned To Stone, with Clamor Of Please rounding things off with a jagged brusqueness.  A powerfully assured debut.

‘I am a cop for the forms that you will fill, for the lease that you take, the commission I make, I am a snitch with a line to the rich, I develop / destroy for my slice of the cake’ (Scammer)

Melbourne’s Hacker – who include members of Infinite Void, Phantasm, and Ubik among their ranks – are a band that revel in the stomp and they deliver it with a relish that is as infectious as it is bruising.  Memory Cache captures their entire discography to date, bringing together 2019’s self-titled demo, 2021’s Pick A Path 12-inch, and 2024’s Psy Wi-Fi 7-inch into a single crushing slab.

A thunderous, swaggering low end supplies the perfect footing for the slab-like riffage as the band barrel from mid-paced groove to mayhem inducing breakdowns with an irresistible compulsion. Front and centre of the barrage are the rasping, growled vocals.  Bristling with a rhythmic hostility, they confront themes of parasitical rentier capitalism, the exploitative reality of the gig economy, and the dystopian future born of rapacious natural resource extraction.

The 15 tracks are reordered and blended to maximise their impact as a single album.  Yet, from the lurching savagery of Algorithim to the pneumatic fury of Deliverator, by way of the utterly seething Scammer, sight is also never lost of the band’s undoubted progression since the raw intent of that first demo.

Minneapolis’ War Plague and Stockholm’s Svaveldioxid join forces for a thoroughly uncompromising split 7-inch.

War Plague and Svaveldioxid have shared an enviable commitment to consistently releasing new music over many years.  Indeed, last year War Plague released their fifth LP, The Rot Thickens, and Svaveldioxid, both a split EP with Destruct and their sixth full-length, Misär O.D (Misery O.D).  And while every band works at its own pace, Absurd Depravity is proof that both these bands thrive on this productivity.

‘A silver spooned fascist, Power hungry addicts, There is no future, Our future’s the past’ (Hellscape)

War Plague kick things off with the searing Hellscape, marshalling muscular metallic crust riffage, with a soaring melancholic melodic motif, and typically cymbal awash drums.  This is a momentum that the surging velocity of Pyre does not allow to go to waste for even a moment.  Meanwhile, the savagely growled vocals survey a world being gutted by corporate greed and government complicity.

‘Man kvinnor och barn, Omringade i staden, Dödsdömda av varlden, Och skjutna av blockaden’ / ‘Men, women and children, Surrounded in the city, Condemned to death by the world, And shot by the blockade’ (Sarajevo ’92)

While War Plague’s metallic inclinations are filtered through an avowedly crust filter, Svaveldioxid’s downtuned buzzsaw riffage is immersed in the rhythms of Swedish käng.  Their opening track, Sarajevo ’92, is built round an absolutely crushing opening and a venomous central riff, while Masspyskos (Mass Psychosis) sees the band let their pummelling mid-paced groove take centre stage.  The semi-shouted, echo saturated vocals explore the horror of the world’s inaction in the face of the Siege of Sarajevo and the seemingly ceaseless spread of mass shootings.

‘Inaction, Empty gestures, Solemn apologies, Trending concerns, Here then gone, What’s the next diatribe? (Popular Causes)

Melbourne’s Cimiterium are back with their third EP and follow-up to 2024’s split with Slavery.  This is another barbarously executed invocation to the spirit of late 1980s’ UK stenchcore.  Crust fuelled slabs of crushing metallic groove, tautly jagged melodic leads, and an utterly remorseless rhythm section all locked into delivering steamroller power over speed.

The savagely oscillating title track opens with a menacing mid-paced gallop before building to a crushing climatic breakdown, while Popular Causes positively revels in the sheer heft of its swaggering riffage.  The flipside comprises Stench And Death, which opens with an absolutely monolithic riff and then layers its ominous intent with squalling leads that grow in assertiveness as the track evolves with a pitiless brutality.  The gutturally roared vocals can’t help but bring to mind prime Karl Willetts as they build connections surveillance capitalism, echo chamber politics, and a rigged economic system.

‘盗まれた街, 資本の奴隷, 分断は続く, 音も無く’ / ‘A stolen city, Slaves to capital, The division continues, Silently’ (Colony)

Tokyo’s Klonns have released a slew of EPs since their formation in 2016, their palette constantly evolving as they absorbed influences from black metal to d-beat into their hardcore groundwater. However, for their debut album, last year’s Heaven, there was a clear sense of that palette being tightened and honed, a process that has been further reinforced on this their second full-length, G.A.M.E.S.

Their current iteration is leaner, less chaotic, yet this increased precision does not in any way dilute their base ferocity.  This is darkly metallic hardcore that seethes with menace and ominous intent.  The bleakly barked vocals, segueing seamlessly between Japanese and English, provoke thoughts of a blackened Roger Miret as they explore a world fracturing under the weight of greed and self-delusion.

Amid the waves of catchily surging riffage, there are two other aspects that seize attention.  The first is the unabashed bounce of the rhythm section, which injects an unexpected elasticity to the battery.  The second is Klonns’ sheer mastery of the breakdown.  Too often a fig leaf in the wrong hands, their deft handling of the mid-paced groove, and then the even slower reworkings, ensure that they slam home with an unforgiving intensity and impeccable timing.

This is an album that does not deal in half-measures.  The savage climatic breakdown to Pledge. The monolithic riffs that define False. The almost euphoric swagger of Fanatic. The stomping ferocity of Ghost.  The bruising swing of In The Seasons Of Terror.  It is the sound of a band absolutely nailing it.

‘In the eleventh station, Watching myself repeat the sin, In the eleventh station, Guilt, shame, useless flagellation’ (Fled)

The cover art to Through The Slow Dusk is strikingly visceral.  It’s apocalyptic tenor, intertwined with that of the title, is infused with a sense of mourning for a civilisation that has now passed the point of no return.  Trapped in a cycle of rapacious exploitation of both people and planet. That even now attempts to avert catastrophe, while essential to nurturing a sliver of sustaining hope, will only postpone the inevitable.  An increasingly dystopian delay of execution.

New York’s FRKSE has been an active musical project since 2009, releasing five previous albums and numerous EPs and split collaborations over that period.  Through The Slow Dusk feels like an important step in the band’s evolution, seeing the band’s unsettling atmospherics moulded into a still insidiously discomfiting, but more structured, assemblage.  It remains slippery to categorise, flirting as it does with the mechanical yet limber soundscapes of Mai Mai Mai and the electronic dissonance of Scorn, together with fleeting flares of more dance inclined rhythms in the vein of Freak Genes.  The atmosphere that unfurls is intriguingly as slyly infectious as it is bleakly claustrophobic

The semi-shouted vocals are more prominent within the mix and present on all tracks bar the two instrumental tracks, most notably the shimmering Oaf.  This adds further solidity to the song construction as they are deftly interwoven with the looping electronics, ominous effects, and brooding restraint of the percussion.  The opener, Foam, sets the tone perfectly (I particularly love the moment when the chant of ‘The Power Of Prayer’ locks in with the taut underlying rhythm) and it is matched in its industrial exhortations by the equally pulsating Ink.  In contrast, Wrote offers a more lo-fi yet no less immersive embrace, while a bristling climax is delivered by the sparsely seething agitations of Fled.

‘Cameras in the living room, microphones listen to you sleep. Every home a cell, panopticon stalking us’ (Stalker)

My grindcore sweet spot is admittedly quite a tight one – I tend to like it to inform music rather than to represent its very essence.  I’m delighted though that I checked out Fake Dust.  They are a grindcore band down to their very boots, but they deploy those boots with an uncompromising intensity.  This is the Portland band’s debut release – following their 2022 demo – and it takes me back to the first time I was exposed to Napalm Death’s Scum and From Enslavement To Obliteration.  They share an energy of something that is utterly unhinged, wholly disinterested in compromise, and yet delivered with a brutal precision.

Spewed growls, banshee yowls, and guttural roars.  Drums that at times hit genuinely bewildering speeds and revel in fills aplenty but also know exactly when to ease off.  Bleakly filthy bass lines.  And riffs that when they assert themselves amid the carnage, do so with a brooding violence that would spark chaos in even the most restrained of pits.  As you might imagine, with twenty tracks being unleashed in under twenty minutes, the lyrics are straight to the point, conjuring the panopticon of technological enslavement and monetised surveillance that we are all now imprisoned within.

The album is, perhaps, best understood as a single sweeping, merciless onslaught.  And it is one that you will find yourself more than willing to submit to as they sweep from the rollicking breakdown that closes Implanted Imperative to the doom-laden heft of Lost Signal, and then from the jagged Starvation Field to the savagely crafted Little Bottle (Public Transportation Pt. 2).  The quality of the individual songwriting though is not to be underestimated.  Indeed, when the band become a touch more expansive on the closing tracks to both sides – Cooked At Conception and Paranoid Epiphany – none of their merciless intensity is diluted.  This is grindcore executed with a rare flair.

‘A system that just can’t perceive you, Beyond mere commodity, It’s rotten from the broken promise, That all good things just trickle down’ (Manic Commodities)

This is the debut EP from Perth’s Gunner, who feature members of a myriad of fine projects spanning Helta Skelta to Gaffer by way of Semtex 87.  Sonically, the shortlived latter are the most relevant reference point.  Across the eight tracks, the band unleash a truly searing onslaught of blown out guitar, filthily strutting bass lines, and utterly remorseless drums, the latter balancing blistering pace with an unabashed love for the fill.

Meanwhile, the rabidly barked, echo drenched vocals drip with contempt as they dissect society’s unerring focus on reducing humanity to mere units of productivity, expendable fuel for the economics of greed and excess.  On side one, the swaggering savagery of The Bad Lieutenant and the choppy fury of Imbalance provide particular highlights, a gauntlet that the venomous title track and the bleakly surging Here Come The Warm Jets prove more than willing to pick up the flip side.  A deliciously gnarly treat.

‘You bought the lie, Because you thought it would help, You blamed a scapegoat for your personal hell, Bur the cannibal system devours its own’ (Collaborator)

Fight Another Day is a snarling denunciation of modern-day America.  An economic system built on endless consumption that is devouring itself, the burden carried by those least able to afford it.  Political grifters serve their paymasters by pointing the finger at those least to blame for it, while unleashing paramilitaries to stalk the streets.  But, above all, the importance of never giving up the fight.  What better soundtrack to this spiralling decline than six blasts of classic 1980s’ USHC?

This 7-inch is the Dimension’s debut vinyl release, following up their 2023 demo, a whirlwind of cleanly sharp guitar, rapid-fire rhythms, and sneering vocals.  The Western Massachusetts band are well-versed in the fundamentals of those that have inspired their sound – this is lean, taut hardcore that puts a premium on brevity and intensity.  Yet, they also understand the virtues that can elevate it to the next level and the songwriting chops to make that happen.  Each of the six tracks slams home with its own thoroughly distinctive identity.  The sledgehammer breakdowns that define Active Duty and My Life, My Terms are absolute bruisers, but the stand-out track is, perhaps, the murderous mid-paced stomp of Collaborator.