Two mainstays of Perth hardcore join forces to deliver a fiercely crafted, darkly savage lesson in crust fuelled metallic hardcore.

‘Watch the planet implode, Scattered bodies fall, Temples to crumble, All knowledge buckles, Consumed in torment, Suffer eternal’ (Devoured By Anguish)

Aglo kick us off on side one with an utterly monolithic intensity.  The duo already have two 12-inch releases under their belt and this split follows up last year’s ‘Fixate & Disgrace / Control & Torture’.  It sees them continue to hone a brutal fusion of metallic hardcore and doom metal influences with a visceral verve.

The guitar tone is simply crushing, a pitch perfect balance of fuzz and heft, laced with flares of sombre melody.  Meanwhile, the percussion locks in with a resolute power and the unforgiving, death metal inclined growls plunge us into the bleakest of apocalyptic futures.

The opening two tracks, Devoured By Anguish and Turning The Screws, searingly ignite the trade-off between restrained muscularity and punishing grooves.  Things then slow to the funereal on Darken Sky, the sludge mired foreboding seasoned with brightly melodic solos, the mournful, gothic drawl of guest vocalist Alex Nilsson-Faulds (Life Cult), and just a hint of stoner metal.  It is, perhaps, this latter dimension that enables to the band to close in such rousing style with a cover of Man In The Box by Alice In Chains, taken from their 1990 album, Facelift.

‘Worked to death and farmed for debt. A shackled mind is a shackled wrist, but at least you can still pray.  Here is the pistol, there is the room, do the decent thing.  Another corporate snuff film’ (Sin-eater)

Many would wilt in the face of such a compelling opening.  But thankfully, Territory are made of much sterner stuff.  Featuring members of Gaoled and No Future, they have been active for the past decade, and this split is their first release since their 2022 EP, The Tower.

The fundamentals of their five tracks are forged in the same merciless crucible as Aglo.  Cavernously roared vocals are matched with filthy buzzsaw riffage as the band segue between slab-like velocity and galloping eruptions, their command of the eviscerating, tension-shattering breakdown absolute.

Lyrically, the band draw connections confronting the relentless grind and ruthless extraction born of capitalism’s totalising logic – the market is always right, humans merely units of productivity.  The venomous climax to Thief.  The seething, squalling fury of Sin-Eater.  The brooding menace of Why Hope?  The sledgehammer grooves of 14:15. The melancholy braided By Any Other Name.  It is this conflict that permeates every pore of their sonic onslaught.

‘The green and gold displays, Safe homes and apathy, Democracy for free, Spoon in mouth, we’re fucking gagging!’ (Spoon In Mouth Disease)

The history of hardcore punk has become so well documented that it now comes as something of a surprise to stumble across a band that you have not previously encountered.  This intrigue heightens further when you see the lineage of successor bands that followed, ranging as they do from Diät to Miles Away, and from Extortion to Total Control.  As the needle drops, your musings on never having encountered Jaws before are soon far outgunned by the pleasure of belatedly having done so.

Jaws were a hardcore band from Perth and were active from 2005, before playing their final show in 2008.  Side A of this reissue brings together the band’s entire twenty track discography, spanning both their self-titled 2005 demo and their sole album, 2026’s Slow Motion Suicide.  Both of these releases were rooted very much in that era, but with some very particular twists.

We’re talking melodically shaded hardcore – think, perhaps, peak Rivalry Records.  It is influenced by the first wave of late 1980s’ youth crew bands, but arguably even more so by the rapid-fire belligerence mid-1980s’ USHC, and then spiced with a flaring rock’n’roll abandon.  Meanwhile, the energetically rasping vocals grapple with rampant consumerism, political lethargy born from relative prosperity, and stultifying social conventions.  The tension ratcheting Spoon In Mouth Disease, the spitting fury of I Did This All Myself, and the blistering Barcode My Life capture the band’s spirit particularly vividly.

The flipside catches the band playing their farewell show in 2008 – a set captured in all of its frenetically raw intensity.  A really well put together package is completed by an excellent A4 booklet that includes lyrics, fanzine interviews, flyers, and live photos.

‘Your time was passed, passing time, Oh what a waste, oh what a crime, If life is love, your love was lost, And it was simply something you knew nothing of’ (Life Is Love)

To release a two track 7-inch in this day and age, you have to be pretty confident that you have a couple of winners to play.  And Life Cult’s assurance is anything but misplaced.  This is the Perth band’s debut vinyl release, and it is a deftly crafted treat.  It sees them take elements of post-punk and death rock, before immersing them in a lushly gothic shroud as they conjure with lives lived and loves lost.

Throughout, there is a tautly balanced juxta posing of the sombre and the strident.  At times the crooning, baritone vocals – which lurk somewhere between Dark Blue and Type O Negative – are barely a whispered murmur yet they still sonorously resonate with an almost timeless conviction.  Similarly, while the guitars revel in their serpentine melancholy, the chunkily elastic bass lines and crisply programmed drums are never less than metronomically propulsive.

Of the two tracks, the mournfully chiming guitar and rhythmic incantations of Death Bell just about edge it for me.  But I’m equally sure that for many, the icily haunting synths and shimmeringly allusive Life Is Love will get the nod.  Whichever way you lean, it is hard to argue that both are not deeply atmospheric cuts.

‘What have you done? Awakened the seed of fear, Tactical subjugation, Through means fit for tyrants’ (What Have You Done?)

Pittsburgh’s Death Gasp have been honing their sledgehammer blend of late 1980s’ UK stenchcore and more contemporary metallic crust influences since their 2019 demo.  Building on a couple of subsequent EPs, the trio now unleash their self-titled debut album.

The desolately roared vocals confront a rapidly spreading contagion of oligarchic power and indiscriminate military violence.  The waves of doom-laden riffage can’t help but bring to mind the bleak majesty of early Bolt Thrower and are furiously propelled by a galloping d-beat rhythm section when the band go up a gear.

It is those crushing slower passages though that arguably prove the album’s defining force.  From the ominous squall that primes the surging opener, Mark Of Cain to the muscular mid-paced heft of Halls Of The Dead, and from the sludge fuelled menace of Executioner to the bruising violence of Born Into Hell, this is stenchcore filthily fit for the malaise of our age.

‘Power, corruption, misinformation, Violence, hatred, with no education, This is the system’ (This Is The System)

Hailing from Kamloops in central British Columbia, Voltage’s self-titled debut album sees them continue to forge the rock’n’roll fuelled d-beat that defined their earlier 7-inch releases, 2023’s Claustrophobia and The War To End All Wars.

Crust-tinged riffs, fleetingly twanging melodies, and flaring NWOBHM inclined solos are married with swaggering bass lines and a bludgeoning rhythm section.  Across the fourteen tightly careering tracks, the focus is admirably singular.  Yet such is the fierce conviction and relentless intensity with which it is delivered that the snapping velocity never dims.

The gutturally growled, gravel flecked vocals are central to this intensity as they confront the slow violence of daily life from grinding work to bureaucratic suffocation amid endemic inequality and self-serving political opportunism.   The barrelling Mind//Charger, the combative sneer of (I Ain’t) Disposable, and the spitefully raucous Wage Slave all land with a raw vitality, before the anthemic, street punk charged climax of Brick By Brick.

‘He left me hanging, On the side of the road, At the devil’s crossing, With nowhere to go’ (Moths To The Light)

Beginning as a solo project, The Drin has since evolved into a six strong collective, drawing members from across Cincinnati’s punk community, most notably Artificial Go, Corker, and Crime Of Passing.  This is the band’s fifth album and their evolution since 2021’s Engines Sing For The Pale Moon has been fascinating to follow.  Each release has become incrementally more ambitious.  That they have again achieved this progression on the back of 2024’s brilliant Elude The Torch is, perhaps, even more striking.

I Lost My Way For Centuries is, in fact, a double album, with nineteen tracks spanning its sixty-minute runtime.  And, remarkably, not once do you feel The Drin’s grip on your attention slip.  The usual pitfalls of such extended releases are resolutely avoided.  This is not say that there is not a certain sprawl.  But rather that it is a sprawl cultivated by a sense of wandering, languorous exploration.  Time is not a concern. Importantly though, the value of traditional songcraft is never blurred, ensuring that improvisation and immediacy are tightly bound together with a singular focus.

The band continue to mould a myriad of influences – bluegrass intertwines with neofolk before pivoting to introduce flourishes of dub punk and psych rock – into a vibrantly textured, deeply atmospheric tapestry.  The heart of the band’s sound remains rooted in the spry rhythm section, brittle guitar, and subtly serpentine saxophone, while the cryptically drawled vocals conjure their wryly abstract vignettes.  With these elements locked in, it gives the band scope to deftly explore a wider instrumental palette that segues from raucously flaring harmonica to the metallic twang of the bouzouki and the dreamy haze of the tambourines.

There are highlights aplenty.  The faded stridency of The Sky Has Lost The Smile.  The harmonica laced jangle of Moths To The Light.  The swaggering, sax fuelled elation of Prophets Of Doom.  The woozy lament of Fatal Charade.  The skeletal blues of Body Double.  The funkily propulsive That Kind Of Water.  The shimmering murmur of the title track itself.  Languidly euphoric, infectiously evocative, The Drin have undeniably found their way, and it is very much one of their own making.

‘Impose blockades, Smirking at spillage and people’s plight, Food rotting, Spoiled and over ripe, Food, Water, Medicine…Essential aid denied’ (Essential Aid Denied)

A kinetic orbital strike apparently refers to a rather bleak military fantasy of an inert projectile that can be fired from space to wreak devastation through the kinetic energy it generates on impact.  As you conjure with that particular delight, imagine it in musical form.  Rarely has a band been so aptly named.

Kinetic Orbital Storm hail from Philadelphia and this, their debut full-length, builds on the uncompromising tenets that defined their two previous 7-inch EPs, both released in 2023 (K.O.S. and The True Disaster).  Savagely guttural vocals wrestle with apocalyptic futures and present-day horrors amid suffocating waves of distortion drenched riffage.  These strands are then bound tightly together by the relentlessly propulsive, d-beat fuelled rhythm section, one that is awash with crashing cymbals, manic fills, and delivered with a brutally uncompromising intensity.

Such is the band’s grip on these dynamics that the force of the individual riffs and the subtle shifts in pacing are never swamped within the onslaught. We’re taken from the bruising bass lines of Sadistic Torture to the bleakly choppy Crawling Fear, and then from the barbarous velocity of K.B.S. to the sledgehammer grooves of No Dream At All.  This is the sound of a band in total control of the chaos they are unleashing.

‘Marching into darkness, unable to ever feel again, cast into the unknown, into nameless graves’ (Nameless Graves)

This 12-inch brings together both of Kinetic Orbital Strike’s first two 7-inchs into a single, remastered album.  K.O.S. and The True Disaster were both released in 2023 and recorded during the same sessions which, together with the remastering, ensures a satisfying sonic coherency to the collection.

Across the ten tracks, the Philadelphia band fiercely filter their Discharge devotion through a lens coloured as equally vividly by the 1980s’ Scandinavian and the 1990s’ Japanese hardcore traditions alike.  Savagely guttural vocals, surges of bleakly distorted guitars, and a relentless, d-beat fuelled rhythm section execute this vision with a brutal precision.

Personal highlights from K.O.S. are the battering ram riffage of Grim Realities and the rhythmic fury of Anguished Misery, while the bludgeoning velocity of Evil Action and the remorseless groove of the title track are the standout cuts on The True Disaster.

Warfare is a split album that sees two stalwart bands of Japanese metallic crust, Ulcer and Disturd, combine forces to darkly compelling effect.

‘They toy with them at their pleasure, like wolves in sheep’s clothing, corrupt master’ (Foxes)

Side one sees Ulcer take the reins with their first new material since their 2017 debut 12-inch, Vandalism.  The band emerged from the ashes of Effigy and Axewielder, a lineage that is richly evident across their four tracks.

Before the trio get down to business proper, the barrelling instrumental opener, Vacancy, primes proceedings perfectly.  Darkly smouldering, ominously doom-laden riffage forms the heart of the battery, locking into a mid-paced heft that is underpinned by a loose limbed yet fiercely propulsive rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the guttural vocals confront a global economic system predicated on exploiting the most marginalised.

The bleakness of the atmosphere conjured, evokes thoughts of late 1980s’ UK crust influences being melded with a healthy lacing of early 1990s’ US metallic hardcore – think, perhaps, Axegrinder meets Culture – and executed with seriously aggressive intent.  Babel and Warfare land with a particularly savage velocity.

‘The reality reflects, undisputed truth, legalized murders in the name of democracy’ (Day)

Disturd, also a trio, take charge for the flipside.  They have been honing their sound for nearing two decades and this release follows up their most recent 12-inch, 2025’s Vision.

Disturd bookend their side with two hauntingly reflective instrumentals and the balance of their tracks then draw on many of the same fundamentals as Ulcer.  The difference lies in the balance of how they are deployed.  Disturd choosing to give prominence to the sheer muscularity of the riffage over any melodic flirtations, as particularly embodied by the monolithic power of Under The Warfare and Wave.

The focus here is on delivering bone shuddering heaviness.  An emphasis matched by the roared vocals, which are intertwined with cleaner backing, as they contemplate a world sinking into the morass of endless war.  It speaks to a blend of the crust fired crunch of S.D.S with the more contemporary brawn of, say, Heiress.

‘A esta farsa hay que desnudar, Quien tiene poder, mas va a caparar, No vavas a olividar, ue nunca a van a parar’ (Egoismo) / ‘The lie we have to unmask, Who has the power, the more they will hoard, Don’t forget, they will never stop’ (Selfishness)

Un Mundo En Demencia (A World Gone Mad) is the third album from Toronto’s Maldita (Cursed), following up 2022’s self-titled full-length.  It remains rooted in the metallic tinged, driving UK82 punk that defined their earlier releases.  However, there is also the sense of a band beginning to spread its wings, leaning ever more confidently into flourishes of post-punk melodicism and strident anarcho-punk rhythms.

The rampant Spanish vocals remain avowedly front and centre.  But, here too, there is a more expansive edge amid the rasping fury as they confront the insecurities fuelled by a society mired in gender violence, technological control, and oligarchical wealth.  The bristling Automacion (Automation) kicks off proceedings with a high-octane snap, before the bristling agitation of Odio (Hate) feeds into the broodingly discordant stomp of Soldedad (Loneliness) and the bruising escalation of Perdida (Loss).

‘Tumbling death, falls from the sky, From overhead, now two million dead, The heart of the city reduced to ash’ (Bomb Blast Inferno)

Hailing from Vancouver, and with Phane’s drummer handling bass and vocal duties, Reaktörí unleash their debut 7-inch, Radiation Sickness.  It builds in no uncertain terms on the foundations of their 2024 demo, 反応器 (Reactor).

Their sound is one rooted in a fierce fusion of metallic crust and raw punk influences.  Waves of distorted riffage and jagged seams of discordant melody are underpinned by filthy bass lines and a limber rhythm section that brings a welcome swagger to proceedings.

The growled, death metal leaning vocals are echo drenched, in the vein of Prophecy Of Doom, as they contemplate a post-nuclear war future.  The surging, melancholy flecked Devastating Chaos (Satan II) and the squalling ferocity of Fallout vividly capture the apocalyptic spirit.

‘Every day I sit and wait, Losing time, Losing space, Losing friends, Losing love, Now everyone’s my enemy, Is this what it’s like to be free?’ (Ego Trip)

Before evolving into its current form, Seattle’s Fashion Change was initially born as a solo project by Ryan Matthews, who is also involved in Democracy, Hologram, and Nasti.  Fashion Change fully reflects this rich lineage, lurking very productively somewhere between the feral desperation of the former and the burly invention of the latter two.

Paranoid is the band’s first full-length and follows up the band’s 2021 cracking debut 7-inch, Devil Laugh.  Brutishly bleak guitars, discordantly squalling solos, and bludgeoning rhythms lock into a malevolent, noise infused barrage that pulses with unpredictability as the rabidly barked vocals and their languidly drawled counterpoints contemplate the dark absurdities of our malaise.

Amid this claustrophobic deluge, the highlights come thick and fast.  The wailed lament that is braided through the venomous opener, Dream Your Death.  The spoken word tirade and squalling guitars that prime the merciless breakdown to Pressure.  The euphoric wail that unfurls from the cacophonous disintegration of City Lights.  The sheer unhinged velocity of Heaven In Hell.  The dissonantly skittering melodicism of Ego Trip.  From start to finish, Paranoid proves a desolately unruly treat.

‘You cannot utter protest, You cannot question your maker, You cannot petition your accuser, The nightmare leaves its mark upon you, To prove that it is real’ (Greater Darkness [Something Worse])

‘This hell will continue, until it becomes, something worse’ is the concluding lament of Thread, and indeed the binding sentiment that defines the album.  The sense that we are now in too deep for redemption to be possible.  Our flirtations with authoritarianism, our rapacious extraction from our planet, are too far embedded.  Our fate is, perhaps, already sealed.

Thread is Ostraca’s sixth album since their 2015 debut.  What has always characterised the Richmond trio’s trajectory has been a sense of incremental refinement and quietly ambitious evolution.  The core tenets of their sound – hauntingly reflective instrumentation relentlessly sparring with eruptions of unhinged intensity, harrowingly shrieked vocals intertwined with demonically guttural growls – has remained constant.  The confidence with which they have marshalled them, however, has only grown in both assurance and inventiveness.

The beguilingly layered Enmiserate and the deceptively infectious Freedom From Pain embody these savagely cathartic, yet precisely calibrated, dynamics to perfection.  However, perhaps, the absolute highlight comes at the album’s close in the form of Greater Darkness (Something Worse).  The mournful, clean sung opening refrain priming the vicious onslaught, which then subsides into a pensive, darkly foreboding mid-section groove, before the seething violence of its climax.

We have also picked up the recent repress of the band’s fifth album, last year’s Eventualities.  A full write-up can be found here.

‘There’s a trace I can’t make out. Burnt plastic and dead flesh. Whispered violence and names buried deep. We forgot something important.’ (Virginia Creeper)

Hailing from Richmond, Virginia, and featuring members of Ostraca, .gif from god have been active for the past decade.  Dissimulation is the band’s second full-length and follow-up to 2019’s Approximation Of A Human.  Their sound continues to be one rooted in harsh metallic hardcore intrinsically braided through with spasms of chaotic screamo and blast beat fuelled eruptions of barbarous grindcore.

The resultant battery, even though judiciously leavened with sombrely reflective instrumental interludes, is utterly punishing in its cacophonous intensity.  An intensity that is only heightened by the six-piece’s dual vocalists as they frenetically unleash death metal growls, abrasively feral shrieks, and occasionally more melodic leaning expressions with an unhinged abandon.  It is a seething torrent that powerfully evokes the album’s primary theme of how technology has morphed into a tool calibrated for capital extraction and social control.  Surveillance capitalism as our rather bleak collective future.

Tracks such as Virginia Creeper and Life Like A Sickness capture the band at their most visceral.  However, the breadth of the moods and textures that the band are fashioning is, perhaps, best personified by the side two opener, Gift From God.  Mournfully skeletal piano and looping percussion are joined by the resonantly rumbling bass before morphing into a grandiosely metallic, clean sung crescendo.  This then dissolves before reformulating itself into an altogether more menacing groove, before a savage climatic breakdown.

‘Si no hay salida, no hay posibilidad, Si no hay lucha, no hay igualdad, Si no hay empatia, no hay esperanzas, Si no hay respiro, no hay Libertad’ (Retén) / ‘If there is no way out, there is no possibility, If there is no struggle, there is no equality, If there is no empathy, there is no hope, If there is no respite, there is no freedom’ (Lock)

Quiet Fear are born of Los Angeles’ Mexican diaspora.  A community that has long been locked into a cycle of economic exploitation, that now faces the threat of marauding immigration paramilitaries, and whose resistance is still sometimes hidebound by the traditions of often compromised cultural institutions.  La Tierra Arriba / El Abismo Abajo (The Earth Above / The Abyss Below) is the story of this fight for survival.

This is the band’s second full-length and follows on from their 2024 collaboration with Massa Nera, Quatro Vientos // Cinco Soles (Four Winds // Five Suns).  It sees them continue to hone a sound that calls on the desperate urgency of 1990s’ screamo and the velocity of more contemporary hardcore with equal relish.  This tautly writhing potency is, perhaps, most vividly captured by the frenetic intensity of Retén, the dramatic ebbs and flows of Sophistry, and the raucously defiant Sombras (Shadow).

Clean toned guitars flare with sombre melody as the propulsive, surging rhythm section locks in.  Meanwhile, the raw, impassioned vocals, which readily alternate between Spanish and English, resolutely evoke the positive power of place and community in combating the forces of alienation and division.

‘I dream of plants growing out of me, Budding branches and flora emerging from my veins, Desperate to meet a world waiting for them’ (Like A Willow)

This 12-inch pulls together both four track EPs released to date by Savannah’s Rosemary Nods Upon The Grave – 2025’s EP1 and 2026’s EP2, which sandwiched their split 7-inch with Heaven Through Violence.

The band recorded EP1 as a trio.  It’s ragged melancholy and cathartic emotional peaks are interwoven with a fierce yet frayed intensity that recalls the formative years of The Saddest Landscape.  In French and I Remember Halloween work their way under the skin particularly effectively.

EP2 saw the band add a second guitarist to their ranks.  This contributes to a fuller and more avowedly melodic expression emerging.  The vocals retain their scrappily strained rawness, but these now interplay with intricately serpentine leads and increasingly staccato rhythms.  The simmering restraint conjured by Of Candle, Vessel, Flame and the convulsing oscillations of Like A Willow vividly capture this evolution.

The band’s name is derived from an Edgar Allan Poe poem, The Sleeper, which uses a moonlit funereal scene to explore the ambiguous distinction between restful peace and eternal death.  This is an allusiveness that is mirrored in the band’s own lyrical introspection as they contemplate personal growth in a world increasingly sucked of light.

‘Youthful ambitions that we’ve abandoned for obligations they have demanded, We have spent years circling the system, We have spent years circling drain.’ (Stormcloak)

Lord Snow are a hardcore band from Chicago, and they were initially active for most of the 2010s.  The band are now emerging from their hiatus with a new 7-inch, Riften, due imminently.  In the meantime, Persistent Vision are kindly treating us to a reissue of the band’s 2013 debut full-length, Solitude, plus a reimagining of the band’s discography, Have You Heard Of The High Elves.  All will be explained!

Solitude remains a thoroughly compelling statement of the then trio’s intent, as fiercely scolding as it was when I caught them at The Unicorn just over a decade ago.  It is an album rooted in densely layered, tautly serpentine emotional hardcore.  Amid the barked, desperation saturated vocals, it segues seamlessly from chaotically angular eruptions to interludes wreathed in a shimmering post-punk shaded melancholy, by way of surprisingly infectious rhythmic excursions.

Bar the ambitiously expansive title track, each track is tightly coiled, lean yet endlessly shapeshifting, seeping into one another as if a single organism.  This fluidity is propelled by a drumming performance of remarkable virtuosic vehemence, equal parts frenzied fury and lithe, jazz-tinged subtlety.  It affords space for moments of striking clarity amid the suffocating sonic carnage:  from the venomously spat vocals of Dark Cloud to the languid opening melody to She’s Clearly Made The Most Of It, and then from the limber percussion of Yellowamarillo / Booker Dewitt to the savage convulsions of Incorrective Unconciousness.

Prior to the band recording Solitude, they had in fact been a four-piece and their original vocalist has now returned to the fold.  The band, therefore, took the intriguing decision to revisit their back catalogue, not only introducing new vocals, but also reworking the compositions.  As a result, Have You Heard Of The High Elves was born, drawing tracks from across their back catalogue, including Solitude, their 2014 split with Afterlife Kids, and their 2019 album, Shadowmarks.

What emerges is an album in which the identity of the original tracks still burns clearly.  However, they are given a touch more room to breathe, albeit the fifteen tracks still career by in just under 30 minutes.  The production is also a touch fuller, so while there remains a satisfying rawness, it is notably less harsh, allowing the individual detailing to sing through more clearly.

Similarly, the new vocals sit more forward in the mix, their nuances more apparent, but stylistically they still closely reflect those on the original recordings.  I’m sure preferences will vary between the two interpretations, but the album undoubtedly serves as a fitting herald for both the return of the band, and their new form, with a jaggedly dancing discordance that could only be Lord Snow.

Have You Heard Of The High Elves can be found here.

‘Acepto el fracaso sin asumirme como víctima. Traiciono los deseos que fueron implantados para dirigir mi conducta hacia la perpetuación de un orden atroz’ (Cataclismo) / ‘I accept failure without seeing myself as a victim. I defy the desires that were instilled in me to steer my behaviour towards the perpetuation of an atrocious order’ (Cataclysms)

This is a reissue of the split album first released in 2022 by Habak and Fractal, bands who both hail from Tijuana and share drummers.  On side one, we are in the hands of Habak.

Habak’s debut, Insania, was rooted in darkly melodic crust.  However, their 2020 follow-up, Ningún Muro Consiguió Jamás Contener La Primavera (No Wall Has Ever Gotten To Contain The Spring), saw the band fuse this core with a rich seam of hauntingly evocative post-metal, which remains a powerful component on this split.  A further texture is introduced by way of passages of almost pastoral acoustic guitar, which foreshadow the band’s exploration of dark folk influences on their most recent full-length, 2025’s Mil Orquídeas En Medio Del Desierto (A Thousand Orchids In The Middle Of The Desert).

As ever, the key to each of the three tracks lies in the band’s harnessing of the delicate and the discordant in a fiercely tensile harmony.  The defiantly roared vocals explore how to live a fulfilling life within the strictures of a hegemonic ideology that places no value on being able to do so.  Cataclismo is my personal highlight.

The flip side sees Fractal take over the reins with a single, fifteen-minute instrumental track.  In essence, they take the post-metal influence that simmers within Habak and place them front and centre.  Soaring melodies are given space to fully unfurl and intertwined with mournful cello as the track ebbs and flows, sweeping from eruptions of metallic heft to passages of meditative introspection.

‘Every day I sit and wait, Losing time, Losing space Losing friends, Losing love, Now everyone’s my enemy, Is this what it’s like to be free?’ (Ego Trip)

Before evolving into its current form, Seattle’s Fashion Change was initially born as a solo project by Ryan Matthews, who is also involved in Democracy, Hologram, and Nasti.  Fashion Change fully reflects this rich lineage, lurking very productively somewhere between the feral desperation of the former and the burly invention of the latter two.

Paranoid is the band’s first full-length and follows up the band’s 2021 cracking debut 7-inch, Devil Laugh.  Brutishly bleak guitars, discordantly squalling solos, and bludgeoning rhythms lock into a malevolent, noise infused barrage that pulses with unpredictability as the rabidly barked vocals and their languidly drawled counterpoints contemplate the dark absurdities of our malaise.

Amid this claustrophobic deluge, the highlights come thick and fast.  The wailed lament that is braided through the venomous opener, Dream Your Death.  The spoken word tirade and squalling guitars that prime the merciless breakdown to Pressure.  The euphoric wail that unfurls from the cacophonous disintegration of City Lights.  The sheer unhinged velocity of Heaven In Hell.  The dissonantly skittering melodicism of Ego Trip.  From start to finish, Paranoid proves a desolately unruly treat.

‘There’s no money round here…It’s so austere and overrun with fear, I can still hear the pounding of the hammer, I can still see the workers queuing for the dole…Livelihoods stole through social control’ (Round Here)

‘Industry? What industry?’ is the forlorn cry that not only sparks the rabid closing breakdown to Round Here but provides the ignition for the wider convictions that propel Rat Cage.   It traces our current national malaise back to the vindictive process of deindustrialisation that was unleashed during the 1980s, a function of the totalising logic of the free market – robbing people of homes and quality work as well as hollowing out public services.  Even now the political class fails to make the connections, allowing extremists to ferment blame that is directed at those least able to protect themselves.

In the studio, Rat Cage is the one-person project of Bry Suddaby, before evolving into the rollicking live band that has rampaged across our stages for the past decade.  This is the project’s third album and follows up 2023’s excellent Savage Visions.  And have no fear, there is not the slightest hint of the edge being dulled – Not Asking For Much is arguably Rat Cage’s most venomously singular statement yet.

The central crucible in which Suddaby forges his sound remains steadfastly resolute.  Surging d-beat rhythms, laceratingly sharp guitar, blues fuelled solos, and rasping snarls evoke the more rock’n’roll inclined expressions of Swedish käng.  He then laces this bracing velocity, perhaps a touch more liberally than in the past, with more avowedly melodic influences from 1980s’ UK hardcore.  The vibrantly melodic Cracks They Show is raucously anthemic and Grass Is Greener is indelibly stamped with the rousing spirit of anarcho-punk, even the cavorting piano that sparks into life at the climax.  Meanwhile, Spiders In A Jar seethes with spiteful intent, before the title track brings us to a close with a boisterously infectious stomp.

‘The architects of our destruction They’re laughing now, Divided? Conquered? How can that be? It’s all connected, It so easy to see, Fates intertwined intrinsically’ (All We Got Is Us)

It has been a little while since Nekra’s debut 7-inch, 2020’s Royal Disruptor, and since then members have been keeping busy with a myriad of other projects, Child’s Pose, Sarcasm, and Turbo among them.  But absence has served only to fuel the fury as they return in typically uncompromising fashion on their latest five track EP.

Is It Really Living? sees the London band bring their trademark rhythmic bite to bear with a renewed ferocity.  The darkly metallic edge to the guitar and the visceral sneer to the vocals, as they alternate between Spanish and English, introduce a menacing counterpoint to this bouncing swagger.

Lyrically, the EP focuses on the need to nurture hope as the kernel of community resistance to a system that actively seeks to ferment division and justify its warped priorities to protect the privileges of capital.  Bad Bitch Stomp kicks off proceedings with a muscular directness, before the bristling exhortations of All We Got Is Us and the squalling, noise fuelled climax of Risk Factor.  I think it’s fair to say that time has not healed.

‘And what more could I possibly ask, as an artist, than that your most precious visions, however rare, assume sometimes the forms of my images’ (Maya Deren, Film Culture, 1961)

The Kyiv born, New York raised short filmmaker, Maya Deren, who died suddenly in 1961, has been a long-term inspiration for Optic Sink’s Natalie Hoffman.  Deren’s film making was interested in creating a poetic aura above all else.  It is very mannered – with every frame and every edit intentional – relying on body movement, slow motion, and jump cuts to create a hypnotic, dream-like sequencing.  Film as choreography.  So, an invitation to create scores to four of Deren’s most renowned films was one that the band could not turn down.

The appeal of partnering Deren’s films with new compositions is obvious.  Yet it is not without its challenges.  An original score has but one motivation – to reflect and amplify the emotion of the film.  When reimagining a score as Optic Sink are, you must not only achieve this but also create an album that has its own clear identity.  And this is a balance that the Memphis band strike with an inventive assurance.

Relentless Metamorphosis is also undeniably an Optic Sink album.  The deadpan vocals are necessarily eschewed.  However, the other defining elements are brought to bear with a typically beguiling precision.  Crystalline guitar and coldly pulsing synths are underpinned by crisp percussion.  The compositions are notably spacious, each individual instrument given room to breathe, and then hypnotically layered and immersively reworked into new shapes.

Each of the four tracks deftly interplays with its film counterpart.  There is an intriguing reciprocity at play as each informs and colours the other.  Yet, equally importantly, every track stands very much on its own two feet.  The Very Eye Of Night languorously unfurls with a shimmering, enticing ambivalence, whereas A Study In Choreography For Camera assertively throbs with disco fuelled synths and Afro-Cuban rhythms.  In stark contrast, Meshes Of The Afternoon glowers with a dissonant, cosmically shrouded sense of dread, before Meditation On Violence languidly coils, a haunting refrain across the shattered remains of an arid battlefield.  A Relentless Metamorphosis in both spirit and execution.

‘I have no will, my will is thin, Let me swill…I lay still, Pondering why? So unfulfilled, What a waste, don’t have the taste’ (I Am Wrong)

Take riff upon riff with proper heft, undeniably catchy yet just shy of ugly in their intent.  Then lace these with lashings of downcast melody and squalling, rock’n’roll leaning solos. Before, locking in a rhythm section that determinedly favours burly, barrelling velocity over speed.  Now, you are ready to say hello to Winnipeg’s Jug.

Head is Jug’s debut album and follows up their 2024 7-inch, Or Not.  It sees them continue to hone a sound that teeters between the darkly infectious and something altogether more malevolent.  The gutturally growled, desperation drenched vocals harness this tension perfectly, a tortured diatribe of the doubts and insecurities that relentlessly stalk our innermost thoughts.

As they rampage from the lumbering anguish of I Am Wrong to the melancholy flecked Quittin Time, and then from the spiteful riffage of The Void to the sombre swells of the closer New Apathy, it proves a thoroughly potent brew.  The closest proxy I can think of would be the unholy union of Gag and Wiccans dropped into an episode of Letterkenny solely for the purposes a wholesome bar room brawl with the locals.

‘Our souls shroud together in red, white, and blue…They’ve sold your life to give you security, You’re abused for a measure of insecurity’ (Measure Of Insecurity)

Jacksonville’s Love Canal began life as the solo project of their vocalist and have since evolved to a four-piece for this their debut vinyl releases.  What has emerged is, perhaps, more fully formed than those early demos, but that coherency has not come at the expense of the anarchic spirit that has always defined the project’s noise infused, crust inclined hardcore.

Ideas flare and disappear with indecent haste.  Those that hang around are mashed together with a frenetically off-kilter abandon.  The vocals are spewed forth in an urgently strangled sneer amid flares of dissonant melody and rumbling bass lines.  And everything is saturated in a louche insouciance that only Florida’s humidity could induce.

As a result, when the opening of the frantic Land Of Hate orders us to ‘Shut Up and listen’, it is a call worth heeding.  Each of the five tracks fizzes with an unhinged vitality that can’t but seize your attention.  The woozy grooves of Scum segue into the neanderthal stomp of Canadian Bacon, while the catchily surging Measure Of Insecurity provides a rousing climax to the chaos.

‘Empty hollow promises, Do you think they care? Game of tricks and favours, Do they play it fair?’ (No Change)

Hailing from Haarlem, and sharing their bassist with Traumatizer, Omtzigt Kommando (Override Command) barge into view with their self-titled debut 7-inch.  Across the five tracks, they deal in an almost timeless interpretation of USHC.  Burly vocals and bludgeoning rhythms lock in with razor sharp, garage-tinged guitars, together with blink and you miss it solos.  They are all wrapped up together to deliver a pugnacious slap to the face.

However, as they confront the reactionary turn in Dutch politics, democratic disenfranchisement, and the creep of the panopticon state, Omtzigt Kommando prove thoroughly adept at bringing their own distinctive stamp to bear on these fundamentals.  The bruising stomp of K.G.B. and the resonantly cascading melodies of State Surveillance are particular treats, before a cover of 1982’s Warsystem by Göteborg’s Shitlickers brings proceedings to a suitably frenzied finale.

‘This brittle lace obscures my sight, In my palms bleeding since last night, My limbs disjointing – won’t you stay? Love Still Unknown, drink decay’ (In The Sepulchre)

In many respects, death rock and doom metal could be said to share the same emotional orbits.  Yet musically, those emotions typically manifest themselves rather differently, propulsive melancholy versus monolithic resolve.  This probably accounts for why few have sought to directly meld these influences.  Sin Offering, on the other hand, are more than happy to take up the challenge and do so with an impressively inventive economy.

Drawing members from Altar Of Eden and Lifeless Dark among many others, Guilty is the trio’s debut full-length, assuredly building on their 2023 demo, Charnel House.  It is an album that revels in space, allowing momentum to inexorably develop, before choosing just the right moment to flex a more assertive dynamic.  The hefty fuzz of the rhythm guitar and limber percussion bring to mind Cathedral when they would give rein to their rockier impulses, while infectiously mournful melodies and chunkily resonant bass lines bathe proceedings in a rather more shimmering post-punk hue.

Conceptually, Guilty draws on the writings of two authors whose own writing was long held subservient to that of their husbands, namely Mary Shelley and Colette, contextualised through with the work of French philosopher, Georges Bataille.  The drawled, languidly restrained vocals deploy these writings to evocatively explore themes of guilt and self-worth, innocence and self-abasement.  From the languorous grooves of Without Sanctuary to the darkly urgent Perfect Hem, by way of the surging Ingenue, it conjures a bleakly seductive embrace that you won’t want to resist.

‘Remember always know your place, And you must never win the race, Keep yourself clouded in confusion, Keep buying into the illusion of choice’ (Hierarchy)

Where The Dregs Dwell is the debut album from Crazy Clue.  They are an Anglo-Canadian collaboration featuring Bobby Cole (Pleasure, Total Con) alongside two parts of Fucked Up, Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk.  This is 1980s’ inspired hardcore that draws with equal relish from both the US and Scandinavian traditions.

Cole and Falco deliver exactly what you would hope and expect with vicious intent.  The former spits and snarls his vocals as he lyrically deconstructs a society enslaved to the self-serving, all enveloping logic of the free market.  Meanwhile, Falco delivers a pummelling rhythmic battery that is relentlessly unforgiving.  Haliechuk’s blistering riffage is equally compelling and that alone would be enough to deliver the invigorating statement intended.

But it is arguably the dissonant melodicism that Haliechuk laces through the onslaught, which introduces an enticingly unexpected dimension.  The discordantly fuzzed chimes prime the frenetic opener, Social Pressure, then flare like a demonic organ during Slavedriver, before fuelling the searingly unhinged Ambivalence and infusing Control with a squalling psychedelia.  There is a slight change a gear for the finale with Broken Spirit, a raucously anthemic call to shed lethargic despondency and to fight back.

‘In questa stagione son florià nulla, La prossima macirà tutto, Verde, Contagio, Raccolto putrido, Gli animali sotto un cielo velenoso e statico’ (Raccolto Putrido) / ‘This season, nothing will bloom, In the next, all will rot, Green, Contagion, Putrid Harvest, The animals beneath a sky, poisoned and still’ (Putrid Harvest)

New Yorks’s Mirage return with their second full-length, following up 2024’s Legato Alla Rovina (Bound To Ruin) and their 2022 debut 7-inch, Immagini Postume (Posthumous Images).  It sees the band continue to forge their savage reimagining of fiercely agitated 1980s’ Italian hardcore, one that is dexterously braided through with darkly discordant, manically off-kilter flashes of post-punk inclined melodicism and barbarously psychedelic smears.

The base delivery is as frantically writhing as ever.  Yet, the band continue to give space for a crystalline melancholy to unfurl – including two palate cleansing interludes – and to bring a burly groove to bear as and when the occasion demands.  Meanwhile, the Italian vocals segue from rasping snarls to ominously semi-spoken tirades as they confront the seemingly remorseless cycle of oligarchical exploitation, climatic catastrophe, and militarised violence.

The sinewy convulsions of Sole Spento (Extinguished Sun). The choppily assertive Portatore Dellultimo Dono (Bearer Of The Last Gift).  The jaggedly melodic Sono Un Abominio (I Am An Abomination).  The metallic tinged, dissonance flecked muscularity of Raccolto Putrido (Putrid Harvest).  The highlights slam home with an unflinching, satisfyingly serpentine regularity.

‘Surrender to technology, Abandon the burden of thought, Endless content to lull you, To sleep a dreamless sleep, That’s what they call progress’ (Unholy Creation)

There is still something distinctively powerful in how the dynamics and aesthetics of 1980s’ UK anarcho-punk continue to speak to our current social condition.  Perhaps, a reflection of how so many of the seeds of destruction were rooted in the neoliberal rationalities that insidiously embedded themselves during that era.

The self-titled debut album from Richmond Virginia’s Dream World takes these inspirations and reignites them with a fury very much of this time and this place.  Urgent, semi-shouted vocals and pounding martial rhythms lock into a rat-a-tat synchronicity amid the surging riffage.  The themes of entrenched economic inequality, worker exploitation, and surveillance capitalism can be traced back with a sobering singularity to the warnings first exhorted some forty years ago.

Dream World’s stirring reimagining is delivered with a precise economy and a deftly understated flair that also calls back to the experimental energies that fuelled those initial pioneers.  Unholy Creation and New Hell fulminate with a classic anarcho-punk velocity.  Then, the searing Submission lets the riffage rip, while Yes Man erupts with a more frenzied immediacy.  Before, haunting melodies and solemn spoken word see the band poignantly rework Sara Teasdale’s 1918 anti-war poem, Soft Rains.

Virginia’s Destruct and Toronto’s Absolut finally realise a longstanding aspiration to join forces, contributing three new tracks each to this split EP.

‘They deliberate, And feed your dreams, With their desire, For mass corruption’ (Truth In The Lie)

Destruct have been on impressively prolific form since the release of their second full-length, 2023’s Cries The Mocking Mother Nature.  With admirable consistency, they have since released a series of excellent splits – Screaming Death (a four-way split album with Dissekerad, Rat Cage, and Scarecrow), To Stop The Conflict (a split 12-inch with Life), and a split 7-inch with Svaveldioxid, before this latest collaboration with Absolut.

It will come as no surprise that the band’s trademark onslaught is fully present and correct, brutally fusing their metallic crust and raw punk inspirations.  The relentless waves of discordant riffage and barrage of d-beat rhythms form a seething backdrop to the roared denunciations of a political system rooted inextricably in militarised violence and economic greed.  My personal highlight is Non-P.N.W.  The midway point when they lock into a fierce cymbal awash groove is particularly killer.

‘Burning light, Stains the eyes, Tanks roll through, Innocence buried under, A new home, You saw it happen’ (S.I.H.)

Absolut have been unleashing their battery of d-beat fuelled raw punk for over a decade now, previously collaborating with the likes Paranoid and Svaveldioxid.  Their contributions are a savage blend of barked, echo drenched vocals and brightly flamboyant metallic solos amid the surging distortion as they confront the willingness of many to turn a blind eye to the horrors that surround us.  It is an uncompromising blend that lands with a particular velocity on the bludgeoning intensity of Otherside.

‘Brutal occupation, violent competition, Power at all costs, silence opposition, No peace in our time, no peace on our minds, No final conflict, war rages until the end of time’ (Brutal Occupation)

Hot on the heels of last year’s debut full-length, Meat Locker, Portland’s Alienator are back with a new four track EP.  And as you would expect, each of the staples that make them such an uncompromising treat are firmly in place.  Bruising breakdowns, shrieking divebombs, fleeting solos, and burly backing vocals are all welded together with a brutal ferocity.  If anything, the gutturally roared vocals have taken an even more nihilistic turn – the glimmers of hope that previously flickered seemed to have been lost, submerged by an all-pervasive contempt.

The Truth, with its cascading metallic leads, and the galloping Eaten Alive get things underway in no uncertain terms.  However, the intensity manages to step up another gear on the flip side.  Never Enough seethes around a venomous central riff before barrelling towards its stomping finale, while the title track burns with a choppy fury and Middle Eastern tinged solos.

‘Wake up cold as ice, Beathing, not alive, Deprived of sensation, Never could be trusted, They know what’s best for me’ (Best For Me)

Stilted 1950s’ educational voice overs.  Savagely whiplash stop-start rhythms.  Powerviolence fuelled hardcore that promotes bludgeoning velocity over speed alone and yet draws on a rich tapestry of influences.  Brain Tourniquet are back with second full-length and follow-up to 2023’s …An Expression In Pain.

Sinking Deeper Into Madness tells the story of a lobotomy – the regret, the fear, the pain.  Despite widespread opposition among neurosurgeons, this now discredited practise (whereby mental illness is treated by severing brain connections) became widely popularised between the 1940s and 1970s.  Its rise was a function of a preoccupation with productivity rather than patient welfare and is now subject to severe legal restrictions.

It is an album that is defined by the tensions that shape it.  Blast beat eruptions wrestle with monolithic industrial rhythms, shimmering cymbals deftly dancing amid the brutality.  The ominously lumbering bass jousts with cleaner, tautly lean guitar, which itself segues from jazz-tinged wah-wah to thrashing ferocity.  The vocals a guttural growl but one that is readily legible as it guides us through the horror.

The trio are deeply rooted in the Washington DC hardcore scene.  The breadth of this experience – Laughing Corpse and Red Death by way of Genocide Pact and Truth Cult to name but a few – vividly colours the onslaught.   The clanking intensity and whispered menace of Concentrate contrasts with the swaggering bass lines and blast beats of Eyes Wide Open and the jagged melodicism of This Is Forever with the funky grooves of Can You Call This A Life?

And then after being pummelled into submission by nine, venomously crafted 60 second eruptions, the album ends of with a cover of The Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows – a languidly spaced out, six-minute psychedelia fuelled wig out as a human mind finally dissolves.