‘Divisive streets turn into division highways, No way through, Build a bridge, Build a wall, This is what it’s come to’ (Division Street)

26 songs in 25 minutes.  And each one of them hits home with the velocity of a runaway train.  Given the scaffolding of downtuned riffs and blast beat eruptions, it would be easy to reach for a powerviolence descriptor.  Yet, the fluid morphing of the song structures is closer to the more organic dexterity of early Napalm Death.  Then other, less expected, influences begin to seize your attention.

Nods to 1980s’ USHC certainly, but the more prevalent influence is the metallic inclined hardcore of the mid to late 1990s – flares and flashes of Endeavor, 108, and All Out War all barge into view.  As I dug into the band’s background, the origins of this thoroughly distinctive blend began to emerge.  Burned Up, Bled Dry were first active themselves during the latter part of that decade, releasing a trio of EPs between 1996 and 2006.  With all of the members now living back in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the opportunity to resurrect the band after a nearly two-decade hiatus proved irresistible.

The onslaught is a touch cleaner than might be anticipated, but this in no way dilutes the sledgehammer intensity and helps lend a striking clarity to each track.  The band’s deft handling of pacing – see the bludgeoning mid-paced dissonance of Don’t Care – further amplifies the album’s flow.  The highlights slam home with a fierce regularity.  The utterly venomous climatic breakdown to Drawing Board (I love the moment where the double bass drum fleetingly kicks in).  The rhythmic, melodic fringed swagger of Not This Time.  The unhinged, discordant angularity of Translucent Mask.  The spiralling, Entombed leaning riffage of Unseen Warfare. The punishing grooves of Future Of Intangibles.

The vocals are rooted in a rasping, classic hardcore cadence and the tautness of the song structures is mirrored by the lyrical directness as they deconstruct a society that is not only eating itself but remorselessly punching down on those already most marginalised as it does so.   Next Stop…Dead Stop… is hardcore at its most instinctual, untamed and unfettered.

‘I’m the never ever learnt lesson, I’m the freedom that creates your inner prison, I’m the reason, the desire, the demon, It’s too late, too late, to stop me now’ (Embodiment Of Denial)

Berlin’s Cosey Mueller returns with her third full-length and follow up to 2024’s Softcore.  Embodiment Of Denial continues to hone her darkly intoxicating blend of synth fuelled post-punk melodies and pounding dance beats, one that is intertwined with pulsing melodic motifs and swells of languid guitar.

The coldly elastic synths and pneumatic percussion, not forgetting the strangely infectious, skittering cow bell, of the title track kick off proceedings with an ominous sense of foreboding, evoking that moment on the dance floor when frivolity ends and the hard yards begin.  The groove laden Nimm Mich (Take Me) and Der Politiker (The Politician) are utterly contagious floor fillers in the classic Cosey mould, while the jarring gyrations of Neue Ungemütlichkeit (New Discomfort) and the deadpan insouciance of Verlogen (Deceitful) work their own beguiling spells.

Cosey’s vocals continue to revel in their own austere restraint, equal parts whispered warning and uplifting invitation.  Insidious repetition and spectral urgings conjure an atmosphere of ambiguous, shapeshifting unease.  She slips seamlessly between German and English as she unpicks the lies (those we tell ourselves and those close to us) and hypocrisy (in the guise of political and media narratives), that shape our lives.

‘Bajo la luna, Haciendo tiempo para bailar, Y espacio para enamorar, La alegria no podemos rindar, Arriesgo contra sociedad mecánica’ (Fracasos Victorías) / Under the moon, Making time to dance, And space to fall in love, We cannot surrender joy, I risk it against a mechanical society’ (Failures Victories)

Screaming Fist hail from Oakland and feature among their rank’s members of Acts Of Sedition, Silent Era, The Separation, Tørsö, Urban Sprawl, and Vaaska to name but a few.  Santa Plaga (Holy Plague) is the band’s second 7-inch, following up 2019’s excellent Templanza.  It sees the band continue to hone their bracingly fast, combative hardcore.  It is laced with an uplifting melodicism that brings to mind a burlier take on Iberian punk in the vein of say Rotura and Suicidas.

The brightly sharp, hook laden guitars are particularly evocative of this style, while the rhythm section injects a rapid fire yet decidedly muscular heft.  Meanwhile, Jasmine Watson hands over her usual bass duties in favour of delivering an absolutely blistering vocal performance that, at times, echo the exuberant drama of Faucheuse.  She brings an impassioned aggression and melodic nuance to bear with equal relish as the poetically framed lyrics contemplate themes of entrenched poverty, the power of community, and religious misogyny.

There is a revitalising vigour to each of the five tracks, with the galloping twists and turns of Gotas (with its imperious NWOBHM tinged vocal crescendos), the vibrantly layered vocals of Fracasos Victorías, and the martial fury of Está Detrás de Ti (It’s Behind You) delivering a particular slap to the senses.

‘Face aux épreuves, nous serons, toujours la, Mains dans la main, jusqu’au judgement dernier, Nous resterons fideles a nos valeurs, meme dans la douleur et pour l’eternite.’ (Et Jusqu’à La Mort) / ‘In the face of adversity, we will always be there, hand in hand, until the final judgment. We will remain faithful to our values, even in pain and for eternity’ (And Until Death)

Prisonnier Du Temps (Prisoner Of Time) is the one-person project of Jacky Cadiou, who also plays in Syndrome 81, Grisaille, and Fine Équipe among others.  This is PDT’s second solo album and whereas his 2022 debut, Comme Un Lion En Cage (Like A Caged Lion), was situated very firmly in the traditions of French Oi, Prendre Le Pouvoir Par La Force (Take Power By Force) is notably more expansive in its framing.

While emerging sonically quite distinctively, PDT closely mirrors Home Front’s ability to deftly meld the raucous melodicism of Oi with a burly hardcore energy and a rich lacing of post-punk melancholy.  And that is not to ignore a certain pop leaning élan and a plentiful braiding of fine SoCal inspired ‘woahing’.  Think, perhaps, of the anthemic fervour of Enemic Interior and Enyor in partnership with the barrelling velocity of Criminal Damage and you’ll be heading in the right direction.

The boisterous exuberance of La Liberté S’Obtient Par Le Sang (Freedom is Obtained Through Blood) and Et Jusqu’à La Mort joust with the brooding regret of L’Armée Des Ombres (The Army Of Shadows) and Dans La Douleur Et Les Larmes (In Pain And Tears).  Meanwhile, the gruffly impassioned vocals explore the importance of community and collective resolve amid the toxic fallout of our rigged economic system and self-serving political institutions.  What emerges is an album that seethes with the raw instinctual energy of its influences, yet harnesses them with a refreshingly thoughtful nuance.

‘Follow trends to lands promised, You know they know the way, Pressed for your own opinion, Ain’t got fuckall to say’ (Crowd Cloud)

Brutishy effective riffs.  Frantically desperate vocals.  Drumming that goes from 0-100mph at the drop of hat and doesn’t relent for even a moment.  This is what happens when a drummer forms a solo project and decides to savagely wrestle his own demons into bloody submission.  It works an absolute treat.

Vince Kopefenstein has played with a myriad of projects – including Loose Nukes, Sickoids, and White Stains – and Shaved Ape sees him take the reins across the board.  Side one features five new songs, side two the five that comprised his 2022 demo, with barely a track breaking the sixty second barrier.  Personal highlights include the fevered ferocity of the title track, the rabidly unhinged Potatofish, and the swinging groove of Worm Food.  No airs, no graces, just fast, raw, heartfelt hardcore.

‘Let’s build a home, where loneliness can’t grow, and success isn’t defined by simply not being depressed’ (The Hell I Know)

I still vividly recall the first time I had the pleasure of catching The Saddest Landscape live back in 2012.  I had arrived at The Black Heart to find a scrawled note on the doors saying that the gig had been moved at the last minute to The Star Of Kings in King’s Cross.  To this day, I have never heard of another hardcore gig being hosted there, but it worked a treat.

A dark, low-ceilinged cellar.  No stage, the crowd jammed into every nook and cranny.  Their anticipation only heightened by having had to run round trying to find the pub in the first place.  We Were Skeletons kicked off the evening in great style, before TSL reduced the room to a sweaty, heaving, hoarse mass with an absolutely visceral, emotionally charged set.

So, I was rather excited to see that the band were returning with their first new album in eleven years, Alone With Heaven.  I must admit that this was tempered with a little wariness when I saw that it was to be a double LP, as they always represent a very specific challenge for bands rooted in hardcore.  Yet, it is clear that TSL knew what they were trying to achieve and how to strike that all important balance between atmosphere and intensity.

In part, it’s because this very balance has always been intrinsic to their songcraft – tension ratcheting builds priming savagely cathartic eruptions, frenetic sonic violence disassembling into passages of swirling, haunting melancholy.  It is also, you suspect, a reflection of this specific writing process itself.  Having toured 2015’s Darkness Forgives, the band found themselves on an unintended hiatus.  Founding drummer Aaron Neigher decided to head off in new directions, children arrived, and life demanded that things slow down for a while.  Rather than resist this, TSL consciously leant into the opportunity that this afforded to them.  They continued to rehearse regularly and used the space to write new material without any time pressures.

The body of songs that emerged is, of course, Alone With Heaven.  The beauty is that they have successfully honed an album that unequivocally honours the band’s roots, while evolving those same inspirations in new directions that feel innately organic.  Anyone who fell in love with the urgent, desperation fuelled hardcore of TSL in the 2000s will know without hesitation who they are listening to – the quivering passion of the vocals, the serpentine riffage, the whiplash rhythmic dynamics.  Indeed, they will find themselves immediately at home with the blistering opening one-two of The Hell I Know and From Home They Run, not to mention the seething Hold It Until It Hurts.

However, it is also obvious that the band are not sitting still.  Instrumental interludes are deployed to great atmospheric effect – prompting reflection while calling on melodic motifs from elsewhere on the album to echo the lyrical themes of memory, loss, and grief (I particularly love the skeletal dissonance of A Badge Of Hope).  Further texture is added by thoroughly well-judged guest vocalist appearances from Jeremy Bolm, Evan Weiss, and, most dramatically, Julien Baker’s searing contribution to the cello laced rapture of The Invisible Hurt.

Remarkably though for an album of such depth, TSL save the absolute peak for the album’s concluding title track.  The roiling, darkly resonant bass line.  The desperation frayed vocals.  The chiming mournful leads amid the rhythmic metallic heft.  Alone With Heaven is an absolute monster of a finale.

And, as is always the case with a TSL album, it is all beautifully put together.  They have always struck me as a band who still revel in music (not just their own) and who love the actual physicality of records.  This manifests itself in the striking artwork and lyric booklet, which evokes the band’s ongoing ambiguous navigation between hope and despair through a blend of sepia tinged photos and shadowy, theatrically staged images.  A wait that was well worth the while.

‘Caught in the rain with a stranger, Wash away the scent, I must repent for things I’ve left untold, Face to face with the devil’s smile’ (Turn Away)

Shards of jangle cut through shimmering waves of melody.  The chunky bass lines and muscular drums lock in with a resolute mid-paced precision.  The darkly enunciated vocals are shrouded in a gothic introspection, the restrained drama of the swelling choruses taking you almost by surprise.

The debut album from New Jersey’s Demmers, and follow-up to last year’s split 7-inch with True Faith, is unabashed in drawing it’s influences from early 1980s’ English post-punk.  Think perhaps of taking The Cure’s Faith and Pornography, with a dash of New Order’s Movement, as a starting point.  And they are just a starting point as, while duly paying respects to their inspirations, Demmers also animate them with their own very distinctive energy.

There is a notable sense of space to the song writing, this deliberate sparseness affording room for each element to breathe and unfurl.  This combines powerfully with the understated heft to their playing, one that anchors the more vulnerable expressions and speaks eloquently to the band’s shared hardcore pedigree.  An atmosphere rich in regret, confusion, and a tentative hope emerges as they sweep from the forlorn flamboyance of Love Me Again to the infectiously brooding Turn Away and then the mournfully swirling Among The Thorns.

‘I am silver and exact. I am not cruel, only truthful.  I have looked at it so long I think it is a part of my heart.  Now I am a lake’ (Mirror, Sylvia Plath)

Ora Sono Un Lago (Now I Am A Lake) is the second album emerging from the collaboration between Francesca Bono (synths, vocals) and Vittoria Burattini (percussion), and follows up their 2023 debut, Suono In Un Tempo Trasfigurato (Sound In A Transfigured Time).  Its inspirations lie in the poetry of Sylvia Plath and Patrizia Cavalli, and their shared exploration of the constant battle to overcome disenchantment with life’s daily mundanities.

Bono’s synths form the album’s cornerstone.  The melodies are brightly crystalline and glimmer with an elegiac fluidity as they ebb and flow.  However, the mid-range registers pulse with a darker foreboding, one imbued with a nebulous sense of a threat that is not yet revealed, lurking just out of sight.  Her vocals are wordless yet powerfully evocative.  Ethereal melodies and spectral whispers are instinctually braided throughout.  Burattini’s drums lock into a limber motorik beat, not afraid to give space, nor on occasion to assert themselves with a more industrial-tinged bombast.

The duo’s assured craft ensures an admirable tautness to the song writing, one that allows their ideas to flex and evolve, but never to unravel, nor to lose focus.  Prove D’Esistenza/Il Gesto (Proof of Existence/The Gesture) deftly juxtaposes mechanical rhythms and mournful incantations, before segueing into the haunting choral chants of the beguiling Nuda Vela (Naked Sailing).  From there we are embroiled in the ominously simmering Acrobata (Acrobata) and then lured into the embrace of the woozily enticing Il Volo Dell’Angelo (The Flight Of The Angel). The atmosphere conjured is utterly immersive.  It invites a reflective, engaged stillness and a willingness to yield without resistance to its densely layered entreaties.

Tokyo’s D.S.B. were active between 1993 and 2010 and this is the first ever vinyl pressing of their second full-length, 2004’s Substitute.

The year prior, the band had undertaken a raucously received first US tour, which had been organised off the back of their 2001 Japanese tour with Deathreat (with whom they also released a split EP with).  On their return to Japan, the band hit the studio determined to take advantage of the resultant high.

Combining both brand new material, and reworkings of some earlier tracks that the band felt had never been done justice in the recording studio, Substitute was born.  It is the sound of a band that was tour honed and determined to capture their unhinged live velocity in the studio.  The onslaught is one rooted in raw punk, liberally fused with the thrashier instincts of late 1980s’ crossover, and then delivered with an utter ferocity that brings to mind the frenetic intensity of their Japanese contemporaries Frigöra.

The barked vocals, and their boisterously deranged backing, alternate between Japanese and English as they confront the constraints of social conformity and economic inequality. It’s a volatile blend perfectly embodied by the rabid riffage of Rebel And Protest and No Imitation Fact as well as the more melodic drama of Liberator.

As it happens, that 2003 US tour was also captured on a tour DVD with excerpts from half a dozen shows spanning Portland to Providence.  It’s now available on YouTube and worth tracking down to get a sense of the energy that shaped this recording.  Packed crowds in sweaty backrooms, teetering in precarious circles around the drum kit, and a band primed to absolutely have it.

‘He tahtoisivat nöyryyttää, Ansiotonta köyhää, Ne eivät osaa edes hävetä, Kumaraan kääntya’ (Ansioton Köyhä) / ‘They long to humiliate, The undeserving poor, Who don’t know when to feel shame, Or when to bend down’ (The Undeserving Poor)

Hailing from Helsinki, and featuring members of Foreseen and Kohti Tuhoa, Yleiset Syyt (Common Reasons) are back with their second full-length, Saitte Mitä Halusitte (You Got What You Wanted), and their first new material since 2021’s 7-inch, Umpikujamekanismi (Dead End Mechanism).  They continue to forge a sound that draws on the traditions of early 1980s’ hardcore, both Finnish and US, to striking effect.  It speaks to that specific moment in time when a grittier ferocity was first introduced to punk, but before more avowedly metallic influences began to emerge later in the decade.

A frantically propulsive rhythm section underpins the clean yet raw riffage as it unfurls in a hook-laden fury and the solos flare fleetingly brimming with an almost classic rock bombast.  Meanwhile, the rasping barked vocals build connections between our complicity in the rise of authoritarianism, our failure to challenge their narratives that punch down on the already marginalised, and our silence in the face of escalating militarised violence.

The catchily frenetic onslaught is vividly embodied by the likes of the jaggedly pneumatic Aavekaupunki (Ghost Town) and the tensely seething title track.  Yet, arguably, the standout moments are when the band take their foot off the pedal just a touch and let their groove take over during the menacing stomp of Inhimillisen Tuho Piiri (The Circle Of Human Ruin) and the broodingly dramatic, post-punk tinged finale of Tuhat Kättä (A Thousand Hands).

‘No busques sombras detrás de mi, las llevo dentro. Vivo ciclos de luz y oscuridad, dolore n llamas, paz y tormento’ (Paz Y Tormento) / ‘Don’t look for shadows behind me, I carry them inside. I live in cycles of light and darkness, pain and flames, peace and torment’ (Peace And Torment)

Barcelona’s Suicidas initially released five EPs between 2012 and 2016, which were all brought together in last year’s discography, Éxitos Y Fracasos (Successes And Failures).  While they remained intermittently active on the live front, they also became involved in an array of other projects, including Irreal, Ruidosa Inmundicia, and Tàrrega 91′ among others. However, after a decade long recording hiatus, they are now back with their debut full-length, Canciones Malditas (Cursed Songs).

The trio continue to hone darkly melodic punk, nurturing a simmering tension that plays off a deep-seated sense of melancholy with their innately infectious melodicism.  Crisp percussion and a chunkily resonant bottom end anchor the taut, regret flecked riffage and brightly supple solos.  Meanwhile, the stridently energetic, deftly layered dual vocals summon the resilience and courage to overcome life’s betrayals and isolation.

Each track is a tightly coiled eruption.  Subtle shifts in texture see emotions swing for the tentative optimism of La Rosa Y El Puñal (The Rose And The Dagger) to the plaintive resignation of Llueve En Mi Corazón (It’s Raining In My Heart), and then from the rueful Senderos (Paths) to the raucous climax of Peligro Social (Social Danger).  It is a finely weighted seesaw between the desolation of loneliness and the quiet resolve of hope and friendship.

‘Amidst the lingering traces of the bustling crowd, The scent of embers lingers as I make my way home, Looking down, searching for the answer’ (雑踏 / Choking)

Tokyo’s Raw Distractions have been honing their UK82 inspired hardcore for over a decade, releasing four 7-inch EPs and a couple of demos.  Now, they step up to the challenge of their debut full-length, and it is one that they meet with a swaggering assurance.  奇しく燃える (Strangely Burning) is the statement of a band who have immersed themselves in their influences to the point where they now have the confidence to imbue them with their own thoroughly distinctive energy.

Front and centre are the band’s vibrantly skittering leads and ripping solos, which are unleashed with an unabashed zeal.  They are boldly melodic and lean into Burning Spirits territory but with a dash more rock’n’roll strut.  The scaffolding is provided by the surging UK82 riffage, with just a dash of NWOBHM gallop, and a fiercely unassuming rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the desperation shredded vocals, and the combatively catchy backing, tackle themes of social conformity and the dangers of rising political and religious extremism.

As they sweep from the rampaging title track to the soaring melodicism of No! Racist, and then from the jagged melancholy of 雑踏 to the thoroughly unexpected Gregorian chanting that is braided through Midnight, it is a raw, compellingly instinctual battery.

‘What is your five-year plan? Who is your mortgage advisory man? Please tell me more about the school catchment area in your new neighbourhood?’ (Settle Down)

To be irked feels like a most quintessentially English emotion.  To be repeatedly agitated by something, but to be too polite to say anything, until you finally erupt in what, to the unaware, may seem like a disproportionate display of anger.

Now, Tyne & Wear’s Irked are most definitely angry but, thankfully, far too impolite to keep it to themselves. So, we are treated to another whiplash tour of darkly acerbic observation and blackly wry humour on their aptly titled debut full-length, The Grievance.

All the hallmarks of the band’s self-titled debut EP are firmly in pace, though they pulse with a more febrile abrasiveness amid the catchy hooks and contemptuous fury.  The tautly clean guitars unfurl waves of riffage that jerk and jolt with a sinewy vigour that matches the propulsive garage punk energy of the rhythm section.

This provides the perfect primer for the utterly virtuoso vocals.  Sardonic drawls morph into urgent yelps and then into venomous tirades with a bristling yet seamless intensity as they cast their eye over themes of cultural gentrification, midlife malaise, and the workplace treadmill.

There are highlights aplenty to get stuck into.  The fiercely rhythmic exhortations of Who Asked?  The ominously roiling The ACP.  The spiralling indignation of Settle Down.  The gyrating venom of The Hardest Man In Billingham. The sax fuelled contortions of Freak Pub.  Each slams home with a bracing, invigorating slap.

‘9 to 5 is all there is, they pocket all the paper clips, take a handful of the staples, spat out by the bad appraisal’ (Stationery)

Seven tracks, nine minutes, and an absolute shedful of ideas thrown together with a rare abandon can only mean one thing – the return of Nottingham’s No Peeling.  This is the follow-up to last year’s self-titled debut 7-inch, and the playfully hyperactive, impulsively off-kilter aesthetic remains utterly untamed.

The joust for supremacy between the scrappy guitar and jarring synths resembles two octopi trapped in an eternal arm wrestle from which neither can escape.  As a result, despite their relative brevity and the committed endeavours of the tightly spry rhythm section, each track relentlessly morphs and reassembles in chaotically unexpected directions.

In the wrong hands, matters could easily unravel and the fact that they never do speaks to the band’s shared intuition for the road less travelled.  The binding glue is, perhaps, the gently drawled, dryly sardonic vocals as they roam from the unwieldy brawling of furry sporting mascots to grabbing your fair share of office stationery to compensate, just a little, for the soul sapping clock watching.  My personal highlights are the darkly swelling Night Idea and the fractured convulsions of Stationery.

‘You’ll always have a chance to joyfully create, Something that’s still fierce and raw, You tell me what’s good or bad, Can’t stand this no more’ (Spiritual Law)

Prepare to be well and truly stomped.  This is the self-titled debut full-length from Bavaria’s Spiritual Law and it’s an absolute bruiser.  The burly yet, at times, blisteringly fast fuzzed out riffage is studded with shards of bleakly ominous melody.  The whiplash solos initially carry with them a thrashier exuberance but are coloured an increasingly psychedelic hue as the album evolves.  The rhythm section locks into a groove fuelled d-beat onslaught, cymbal awash and imbued with an innately limber swing.  Meanwhile, the barked, echo drenched vocals confront a world mired in wilful ignorance, militarised violence, and strangled potential.

The sledgehammer velocity is utterly unforgiving.  There is always a temptation to immerse everything in waves of distortion (and don’t worry there is plenty of that).  However, any potential overkill is resolutely resisted and instead space is afforded to each constituent element of their sound.  This adds, despite the overriding sonic brutality, a really satisfying granularity, from the lumbering menace of the bass to the deranged hi-hat eruptions.

The venomously shifting dynamics of Slander Me and the agitated grooves of I.H.R.K. unleash the punishing body punches, before the kick drum propelled title track and the unhinged euphoria that grips The Cleansing land the killer blows.  It is an utterly frenetic and richly detailed onslaught.

‘Hi hag holl verc’hed an dispac’hoù, Disprizet hag ankouet, D’ar re a faot dezhe chanch an traoù, Trugarez da vout bet’ / ‘Her and all the women of the revolutions, Despised and forgotten, For all those that want to change things, Thank you for being’ (Nathalie Lemel)

Spont Ar Stad (State Terror) is a stirring exploration of how the constructs of power so insidiously shape our lives.  How those who exercise them seek to create a hegemonic grip on the public consciousness, disavowing the potential for change, and breeding resigned acceptance of the status quo. How they attempt to present these outcomes as just plain common sense, to silence debate as if they are a technocratic inevitability that must simply be endured.

This is the self-titled debut album from France’s Spont Ar Stad and it calls back to the roots of 1980s’ UK anarcho-punk in the vein of Zounds and early Karma Sutra.  The production is undistorted, rather than clean.  This imbues the guitar with a brittle resonance as it weaves its sombre melodies and, similarly, the rhythm section bathes in an understated analogue warmth.  This affords an unexpected clarity to the instrumentation, revealing a subtle detailing without diluting the velocity of the delivery.

The Breton vocals sit front and centre, fiercely ardent as they segue from the semi-shouted to more melodic, folk tinged, and on occasion dub leaning, expressions.  As they sweep from the powerfully layered climax to Nathalie Lemel and the deft melodic flourishes of An Arnev (The Thunder), to the rousing dual vocal chorus of Massive and the bristling Hurle Brûle (Howl Burn), Spont Ar Stad reanimate their influences with a fresh fury.

‘Spineless authoritarian, Cowards like they grovel, For an inch of kick, The white knight bathed in piss, Of a future, Unbearable’ (Swabbed)

I had the good luck to catch Pleasure on tour last year as they and Mother Nature laid waste to New River Studios.  The set kicked off with the lead singer, as I remember it, emerging from some sort of makeshift coffin.  It wasn’t entirely clear why, other than that was what he fancied doing.  It does, however, speak to the fevered, instinctual energy that permeates through every pore of their abrasively fraught debut album, Manic Phase.

And have no doubt, the Leeds band, who include members of Frisk, Total Con, and The Wound among their ranks, are in rampaging form.  A twin guitar attack forms the cornerstone – one teases out the sinuously dissonant leads and squalling solos, the other brings a more metallic brawn to bear – while the rhythm section goes about its work with a frantic relish.  The atmosphere is tensely claustrophobic, priming the desolation drenched vocals as they struggle to escape the suffocating tentacles of the surveillance state and entrenched consumerist compulsions alike.

The desperation contorted title track and the savagely seething Motivational Speaker suck us in, before the despairing urgency of Sneak and the bleakly chugging chorus to Homeowner spit us out.  Disconsolate, unsettling, and yet in a way that undeniably sparks your limbs into life.  Manic Phase is proof that amid our collective pain there is still pleasure to be found.

‘Males herbes, Creixent al nostre voltant, Llengües enverinades, Amb discursos inhumans, Manipulen i corrompen, La llibertat, Els seus cors podrits d’odi’ (A Cop De Falç) / ‘Weeds, Growing around us, Poisoned tongues, With inhuman speeches, Manipulating and corrupting, Freedom, Their hearts rotten with hate’ (With A Sickle)

Nationalism is a toxin that seems to be coursing ever more freely though public life, sowing hatred and proffering cruelly misguided panaceas.  Yet there is a much more positive flipside to the idea of belonging.  Ground-up pride in our locality and our community can be a powerful force for the collective good.  And it is this sense of place, framed through the rural anarchist traditions of Montserrat in Catalonia, that fuels Enyor’s deeply emotive second full-length, Sola D’Espart.  Indeed, the term ‘enyor’ speaks to a sense of longing, not just for that which has been lost, but even more importantly, the better futures yet to be realised.

As with their debut, there are no half-measures.  Every element is delivered with an impassioned sincerity.  The gruffly hoarse vocals, the warmly hazy guitar tones, and burly UK82 rhythms vividly conjure a very specific melancholy.  It speaks equally to the traditions of both late 1980s’ UK punk and more contemporary Iberian expressions.  Think, perhaps, of the guitar work of Frankie Stubbs braided through the anthemic stridency of say Enemic Interior and Gurs.

The mournful melodies and uproarious choruses will be what first seizes the attention.  Though, as you immerse yourself, the deft use of differing textures will be just as persuasive in bringing you back.  The cascading Stubbs-esque guitar work that propels the climax to Un Milió Més De Cops (A Million More Times).  The heart swelling layered group vocals that define Ceba Tendra (Spring Onion).  The jagged riffage of A Cop De Falç.  The fiercely dualling vocals of the climatic FTM.  It proves to be a thoroughly evocative declaration.

‘La IA avanza sin control, Sarah Connor lo advirtió, No confíes en un robot, Llegas tarde, ya eres otro…’ (Esclavos De Internet) / ‘AI is advancing unchecked, Sarah Connor warned us, Don’t trust a robot, You’re too late, you’re already someone else…’ (Slaves To The Internet)

Esclavos De Internet is the debut full-length from Ficción (Fiction), who hail from Algeciras in southern Spain.  Despite its futuristic sheen, this is something of a throwback to an earlier time in its carefree eclecticism.

Ficción forge an atmospheric blend of garage punk energy and more languid, darkly melodic post-punk restraint, which they then shroud in an understated 1980’s new wave sensibility.  The defining force throughout though is, perhaps, the keyboards as they inject a barrelling, Snuff-like hammond organ vitality that binds everything together with gusto.

Meanwhile, rather belying the album’s essential playfulness, the nasal Spanish vocals consider the growing threats to society, ranging from AI to corrupt legal systems, and ever escalating militarisation and fanaticism.  The brooding intensity of Pacto (Convenant), the mournful melodicism of the title track, and the rather more languorous closer Mujeres Armadas (Armed Women) capture the mood particularly vibrantly.

‘I want a model life, You hear they’re all the rage, I want to live it right, But I’ve got bills to pay, Another pointless form, Be sure it’s never late’ (Clocks)

Longevity can be born of many admirable virtues – friendship, trust, the shared confidence to experiment.  But, by the same token, it can also become mired in less attractive qualities – inertia, staleness, paths of least resistance.

The dangers of the latter taking root in a band who have been together for twenty plus years, and some fifteen albums, would seem almost overwhelming.  But Hey Colossus are vibrant proof that it is by no means inevitable.  That such experience, such bonds can be harnessed for the positive and certainly need not be a chain that constrains.

None of this happened by accident mind.  The band consciously set out to push themselves and each other.  They took their new material out on the road, playing four sold out shows in four nights in four different corners of London, refining and honing each track in the live setting.  They then took this same ethos straight into the studio – just five days, playing live, playing loud.  Heaven Was Wild is a vivid testament to the success of these efforts.  The trademarks of Hey Colossus’ noise rock infused post-hardcore are all firmly in place, with each now smouldering with a fresh intensity.

The supple muscularity of the rhythm section provides a fluid yet rock solid cornerstone.  The sinuous waves of brightly sharp riffage morph and reformulate as they lock into surging grooves or disassemble into more reflective excursions, without ever losing sight of their original identity.  The vocals add another dynamic layer as they segue from crooning drawls to more stridently assertive expressions with an impressive dexterity, bringing to mind an unholy, yet strangely considered, union of Jack Terricloth (World/Inferno Friendship Society) and Conrad Keely (And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead).

There is so much to get your teeth stuck into.  The richly layered dual vocals of Clock and the contagiously driving intensity of Death And Deliverance provide an exhilarating one-two.  The death rock-tinged Consequences and the languid swing of Party Of Fleas offer more restrained but no less enticing pleasures.  Heaven Was Wild is an album born of an instinct to get down raw and fresh, and it has paid off in spades.

‘There’s a thousand ways, A thousand ways to pray, There’s a thousand different ways to, To bend down and kiss the ground’ (Bend Down And The Kiss The Ground)

Bend Down And Kiss The Ground explores one of humanity’s most enduring frailties.  Our willingness to take solace in empty promises and knowing refuge in convenient excuses.  From the glib solutions of politicians and the self-serving narratives of populist opportunists to the endless promises of delayed celestial reward.  Anything but to face up to the true causes of our malaise.

Hailing from Nottingham, and featuring members of Army Of Flying Robots, Blind Eye, and Moloch, Bloody Head are back with their follow up to 2024’s Perpetual Eden.  Despite this being the band’s fifth album over the past decade, I must confess that this is my first encounter with them – and I’m rather delighted to have made their acquaintance.

Bend Down And The Kiss Ground sees the band continue to hone a sound that brings a pronounced metallic heft to bear on their already burly post-hardcore heart and then braids it through elements of doom and sludge, before finishing with a squalling noise rock aesthetic.  It is a powerfully immersive blend and one that Bloody Head handle with an assured confidence, and no little craft.  It evokes, for me at least, shades of both Corrosion Of Conformity’s Blind and The Rollins Band’s The End Of Silence, not least in the shared dynamics of how brooding menace is so deftly married with a slam hard hardcore velocity.

Side one comprises three tracks.  Children Of The Dusk is built around a savagely compelling central riff, while the title track is defined by the sledgehammer rhythm section, before the bleakly ruminative instrumental, Vibratory Affinity.  The flipside features just a single track.  Time, As Veiled Eternity unfurls through three distinct phases.  It opens with wah-wah guitar tones, industrial rhythms, and anarcho-style, semi-shouted vocals, before subsiding into a more introspective passage of spoken word and haunting melody, and then locks into an utterly bludgeoning groove for the finale.

The album spans 32 minutes.  I mention this only because I know many of us get sweaty palms at the thought of hardcore bands getting all prog with their three-minute odysseys.  But you needn’t worry.  The dynamics of the four tracks are constructed and layered with such skill that they never even hint at outstaying their welcome.  Indeed, the end invariably catches you slightly by surprise, so all enveloping is the onslaught.

‘They dispossess us, Try to fix it, Around a cup of tea they already spat in, A presentation, Always a circle, Dreamy plantations you’ve always been longing for’ (Concrete’s Discipline)

Slumber Between Rotten Walls tells the story of how the all-pervasive forces of real estate capital are reshaping the cities that we live in.  Homes become merely units to realise investment yield.  Communities are told that they no longer warrant their place in the heart of the city.  Infrastructure becomes governed by the demands of segregation and surveillance.

This is the first vinyl release from Toulouse’s Nohz.  Their savagely blackened hardcore perfectly embodies this cycle of decay, deceit, and displacement.  The guitars are bleakly atonal yet also cleaner than we might expect, the scrappy leanness of the riffs eliciting unexpected thoughts of black metal suffused garage punk.  The burly rhythm sections injects a limber swing to the battery, while the bestial, echo drenched vocals dissect a world that is slowly dissolving around us, our histories erased by the shameless pursuit of profit.

The searing opener Concrete’s Discipline sets the tone with an unforgiving authority, and it is one that is remorselessly maintained as Nohz sweep from the groove fuelled Broken Teeth, to the venomously cascading squall of DPDR, and the melancholy flecked Dull Crown.  A darkly insidious debut.

‘And I would fall in love with anyone, Who showed a little bit of kindness, I never knew how to give it to myself, Now I see it was blindness’ (Dynamo)

Musical genres are by there very nature open to interpretation, but few are quite as slippery as that of power pop.  But, if I had to point someone to a record that I felt captured the essence of what I think it is, We’re All In This Together by Plastic Tones – the Helsinki band’s third full-length – would be pretty much at the top of the list.

So, what are the ingredients that we’re talking about?  Classic new wave forms the base and is then laced through a healthy slug of the punk vitality, together with a notable indie pop melodicism, and is then rounded off with a shed load of sing-along choruses that relish a certain 1980s’ rock bombast, even including a knowing nod to Bonnie Tyler.  Think, perhaps, of Chin-Chin and The Go-Gos whipped up with Supercrush and you will be heading, at least partly, in the right direction.

The guitars are brightly melodic with a hint of shimmering fuzz and just enough underlying heft not to float away, while the rhythm section bounces along with a languid restraint.  It is, perhaps, the vocals though that bring everything resolutely into focus.  Vocalist Tytti, who also fronts synth punks Modem, is in imperious form.  The key is that for all her strident, clean sung melodic power, she retains the dexterity to ensure that the shifts in emotional nuance are never overwhelmed. The album’s jauntily upbeat energy, however, belies some rather darker lyrical themes as it contemplates our lack of grace and understanding towards both ourselves and those around us.

The standout moments come thick and fast, from the irrepressible We’re All In This Together and the soaring climax to Dynamo, to the infectiously chugging Change My World and the sheer drama of Waste Another Day.  Sounds to kick start your summer in style.

‘I say I wanna do it again, But what life is now, Is not what life was then, Not better, not worse, just different’ (Fun Is Always Brilliant)

Dog Chocolate return with their fourth album, So Inspired, So Done In, their first since 2018’s Moody Balloon Baby.  Sinewy guitar and a spryly fluid rhythm section remain at the heart of their frantically anxious post-punk.  They are intertwined with a raggedly off-kilter art punk instinct that in turn wrestles with a more strident, constantly simmering noise rock discordance.  At first glance, these latter two influences might seem unlikely bedfellows, yet their mutual inclination towards the abrasive provides a fruitful common ground.

The nasally agitated vocals, with plenty of drawled detached backing, wryly meditate on both the mundane and the absurd that shape our daily lives, covering everything from unfortunate rashes to unfinished tattoos.  The evolving role of work emerges as a recurring theme and not least how society increasingly seeks to disguise insecurity and precariousness as flexibility and opportunity.

So Inspired, So Done In revels in its contrasts.  Playful yet tense. Whimsical yet serious.  Restless yet contemplative.  As it roves from the rhythmic tirade of Employee to the tautly writhing Springfield Library Haunting , before exploring the dissonant electronics of No Pavement Story and the sombre, richly layered Worst Jobs In History, it proves an album of jarring, restless invention.