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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Back in a corner I’m left to die, Carried by the Thames and the tide, Where my body drifts I will lie, Beneath the ruins I reside, Internal war’ (Black Milk)

Stingray are back with a new 12-inch and follow-up to 2023’s searing Fortress Britain.  The anger remains undimmed, the sheer ferocity unrestrained.  But, there is also a new assurance to the London band’s delivery that allows them to give even fuller rein to their thoroughly instinctual hardcore.

It is, perhaps, the twin guitar onslaught that proves the defining force.  From the galloping velocity of the title track opener to the coruscating climatic breakdown to Like Dogs and the slab-like grooves of Impending Doom, the band draw on the muscular heft of mid-1980s’ thrash metal and then force feed the riffs through a much darker, crustier Japanese hardcore filter.  In contrast, the solos are steeped rather more in a classic, unabashed heavy metal flamboyance – the closing volley to Failed Harvest is nothing short of unhinged.

The barbarously roared vocals and the bruising rhythm section provide a resolutely unforgiving backbone to this feral virtuosity.  A new element is also added courtesy of guest vocals from (I believe) Hellscape’s Ciara – first, a gothically drawled incantation during Black Milk and then her fierce dual vocals are deftly interwoven through Like Dogs.  This visceral battery conjures a world where hysteria grips, divisions are stoked, and we once again career towards a world at the mercy of military brinkmanship and authoritarian impulses.

‘Je vois la vie sourire, Je détruis mon empire, Je me sens dépassée, Il est temps de recommencer’ (Fatigueé) / ‘I see life smiling, I’m destroying my empire, I feel overwhelmed, It’s time to start over’ (Tired)

Brussels trio, Cœur À L’Index (Heart On The Index) are playing their final show later this month.  But, before they bow out, they are treating us to a farewell 7-inch.  The two tracks build very much on the dreamily vibrant power pop of their debut album, 2024’s Adieu Minette (Goodbye Kitten), drawing with relish on early 1980s’ influences that are equal parts punk and indie pop.  Think perhaps of Chin-Chin and Shop Assistants hazily intertwining and you’ll be heading in the right direction.

The bittersweet vocals, and delicately layered backing harmonies, sit front of centre amid the crystal bright jangle of the guitar, subtly teasing melodies, and crisply limber rhythms. Fatigueé unfurls with a sombre restraint to match its tale of starting over again.  While the gently infectious Mes Héros (My Heroes) builds to a rousing finale as it yearns to regain a sense of optimism that all is not yet lost.

‘Everything is burnt behind you and in front of you! Streets, cars, and mosques, There is no god left, Neither on this side of the pond, nor on the other side’ (They Decide For Us)

It is hard to imagine the conflicting emotions that must currently grip the Iranian people and the country’s wider diaspora.  Over forty years on from a stolen revolution, after four decades of brutal theocratic tyranny, it felt like the regime was finally on the verge of toppling.  Then, fuelled by their own self-serving imperatives, the US-Israeli axis blundered into the mix, deepening the bloodshed and the economic hardship, crassly calling for the Iranian people to rise up, and reinforcing the extremist grip on power, just when it seemed at its most fragile.  To want one thing in the world to end more than any other, but in any way other than this.

Corrupt / فاسد is the second 12-inch from Siyahkal, following up their steamroller of a debut, Days Of Smoke And Ash / روزای دود و خاکستر.  Anyone who had the good fortune of catching the Toronto band on their UK tour last year will already be bracing themselves.  The intensely rhythmic, semi-shouted Farsi vocals are locked in merciless synchronicity with the bludgeoning rhythm section and then braided through both with savage howls and chanted invocations.

Meanwhile, the metallic-tinged riffage flares with psychedelic smears, discordant squalls, and soaring melodic leads.  This fusion of infectiously stomping rhythms and brutally precise riffage is fiercely intoxicating from the bruising grooves of Freaky Bedbugs to the surging density of Anarchy In Iran, and then from the kick drum fuelled discordance of Time To Hunt to the venomous closer They Decide For Us.

The band take their name from a 1971 prison break that is widely viewed as the spark that ignited organised resistance to the Shah’s regime.  A resistance that ultimately overthrew an oppressive monarchy in 1979, only to itself be subverted by an equally oppressive theocracy.  Lyrically, the Iranian people’s fight to regain their freedom remains at the heart of Siyahkal’s music, fuelling a wider message of anti-authoritarianism that has never been more powerfully relevant to us all.

‘Is your blood on boil? Is your flag unfurled? Do you hear the sound? Of savage lust, A primal scream, A fatal thrust’ (Apex Calling)

Good ideas should not be thrown away lightly.  This, in many ways, is the defining mantra of Station Model Violence.  They need to be refined, draped in nuanced detailing, layered with a deft subtlety, and allowed to breath to the point where they are all enveloping.  What emerges is an album of relentlessly propulsive post-punk.  It is a sonic massage that is warmly immersive yet also simmering with a nebulous sense of sinister foreboding.

This is the debut release from the Sydney based band, who feature former members of R.M.F.C., Straightjacket Nation, and Total Control among their ranks.  The album’s scaffolding is built around Heat, a hypnotically monolithic, eight minute slab that kicks off the second side.  The brightly jangling guitars and the limber rhythm section lock-into a remorseless groove that is braided through with serpentine saxophone.  At the same time, the sombrely deep vocals lean into the power of repetition, inviting the listener to lose themselves in the song’s embrace.  The fact that it barely registers as a fraction of its run time speaks to that undeniable allure.

These are the fundamentals that the band rework and reshape with intriguing invention throughout.  Melody bathed groove and vocal reiteration provoking each other into an atmosphere of fevered introspection.  And each track pulses with its own fierce clarity.  The darkly urgent Leisure with its call of ‘And no one knew your name’.  The haunting vocals of Apex Calling that prime a euphoric, saxophone fuelled finale.  The plaintively escalating Falling Down.  Station Model Violence proves a richly mesmerising introduction.

‘Keeping falsehoods on a one-legged pedestal, Concocting lies and keeping it criminal, Spewing trash on the highest pulpit accessory, The blind eyes are lawless and divisional’ (Red State)

‘What is your line?’. This is the simple, ever more pressing question posed by Blind Eye.  As our civil liberties are eroded with increasingly brazen abandon.  As our privacy is thrown open to those least interested in safeguarding it.  As our public discourse is poisoned by opportunists and charlatans seeking to sow division and to blame those least able to defend themselves.  It is an insidious cocktail and one that threatens to slowly, but ever so surely, submerge us.  And yet, whether through fear or convenience, self-preservation or self-interest, we allow the red lines that define our decency to continue to shift beyond what we ever thought to be acceptable.

Hailing from Nottingham, Blind Eye share an impressive pedigree spanning as it does Bloody Head, Heresy, and Pitchshifter.  However, it is the intensity of their present-day convictions that vehemently define their second full-length, Mistrust Your Nation.  The band’s soul feels like one rooted in 1980s’ anarcho-punk and then refracted through a prism that calls with equal relish on a Japanese hardcore inspired snap and an uncompromising metallic heft.  Intriguingly, the latter influence evolves in unexpected shades.  There is a louche swagger to the guitar and the filthy bass lines, not to mention a jazz-tinge to the solos, that can’t help but evoke whispers of Handle With Care-era Nuclear Assault.

Similarly, the vocals call upon a fierce anarcho rat-a-tat-tat but are, perhaps, even more indebted to the NWOBHM influenced vocals of the pioneering mid-to-late 1980s’ thrash bands, before they were later subsumed by the pincer movement of hardcore snarls and death metal growls.  The verve of Anmarie Spaziano’s vocal performance is absolutely barnstorming.  Powerfully strident, defiantly melodic, but not afraid to get down and dirty with a venomously sneering tirade, she takes aim at misogynistic constraints, our drift into demagoguery, the pollution of public life by oligarchical money, and our own quiet complicity.

From the seething escalation of Blitz Can to the raucously crushing closer Who’s In Control, the ferocity is as invigorating as it is unrelenting.  It arguably reaches its zenith at the midway point as the confrontational stomp of Red State, and the bludgeoning grooves of What Is Your Line? leave nowhere to hide.  Are you ready for the fight?  Because Blind Eye most certainly are.

‘I watched my parents kill themselves at work just to feed me, And I’m killing myself in the same way, But I struggle to feed myself’ (Death To All Oppressors)

I first came across Lágrimas (Tears) through their searing 2023 split album, which brilliantly juxta posed their savage eruptions with the expansive atmospherics of Habak.  This is the Los Angeles band’s first vinyl release since then, and features the band’s latest five-track EP, I’m Not Strong Enough For This, and then on the flipside a reworking of their first four-track demo, 2019’s Like When I Was A Kid.

Their melodic crust continues to ferociously fuse detonations of viscerally cathartic hardcore with passages of beguilingly introspective melody.  The earlier material is, perhaps, more rooted in the classic dynamics of late 1990s’ screamo, with the band’s subsequent evolution placing greater emphasis on the soaring intensity of their neo-crust influences.

The harshly roared vocals build connections between the forces of capitalist extraction that are ravaging the planet (Our Decline), relentlessly grinding our communities into the dust (Death To The Oppressors), and fuelling the murderous violence in Gaza (They Get Paid For It).  Following the serpentine vehemence of the opening I’m Not Strong Enough For This, these latter two tracks land an utterly venomous, darkly anthemic one-two, before the fiercely writhing finale of Devil Wind.

‘I’m in love with my conflict and I’m in love with my pain, I’m in love with what makes me feel in love with what I hate’ (Love What You Hate And Love That You Hate It)

New Orleans is often cast as a city of folk-devils, personified by its notably distinctive cultural history and its uniquely perilous geographical location.  Fewer hardcore bands have, perhaps, emerged from the city than might be expected.  But, whenever they do, they bring with them a swagger that tells you exactly where they are from, a tradition that D. Sablu are more than happy to continue.

D. Sablu actually began life as a solo project for their vocalist. But, after a slew of demos, they evolved into a full band for their 2024 debut album, No True Silence. Righteous Light is the follow-up 7-inch and sees the band continue to revel in a blend of classic USHC, rapid-fire garage punk, and energetically wailed vocals, all delivered with an exhilarating relish.

Side one opens with Electrified Beat, a frenetic blast blessed with a swashbuckling climatic solo, before feeding into the contagiously stomping grooves of Love What You Hate And Love That You Hate It.  Side two comprises of the bass fired Socialized, which sits somewhere between the two – all riffs, attitude, and sheer rock’n’roll fervour.

‘Under the grip of the not-so-pleasant man, he’s taken power from our sweat again. We stumble, we cry, we’ve moved an inch of the mile.’ (1%)

Policy Of 3 are a hardcore band from Philadelphia / South Jersey, who were first active between 1992 and 1995.  This remastered 17-track discography brings together all of the band’s released material, featuring their sole full-length, 1993’s Dog Dead Summer, together with two EPs – 1993’s self-titled 7-inch and 1995’s American Woodworking – and a variety of compilation contributions.

The band originally began three years earlier as Matter Of Fact, born of New Jersey’s straight edge scene.  Their rebirth as Policy Of 3 was a conscious response to the increasing militancy and growing political ambiguity of elements of the East Coast straight edge community.  In this form, playing with everyone from Antischism to Undertow via Groundwork on their first US tour, they emerged as a notably influential band.  Not just musically, but also in terms of their commitment to the DIY ethic and reasserting the political dimension.

The band are, perhaps, best understood as a bridge between the Washington DC scene of the late 1980s and that which later coalesced around Ebullition and Gravity Records in the mid-to-late 1990s.  Although, elements also speak to the more indie punk expressions that also evolved in that latter half of the decade.

The key to the band’s dynamics lies, perhaps, in their restraint and patience, the desire to explore the introspective and the cathartic in tandem. They are not afraid to allow the momentum ebb and flow, before locking in and building layer upon layer, ratcheting up the tension as they go.  The release of the culminative eruptions is almost cleansing.  The energetic, often dual vocals imbuing them with a vibrantly impassioned intensity.  The serpentine convulsions of Improve Kulture Kill and Of The Wolf contrasting with the coruscating detonations of 1% and Drone.

Reanimating the political component of hardcore is also central to the band’s identity.  The lyrics are often allusive in flavour, yet are used to explore themes of social justice, endemic violence, animal rights, and wider environmentalism that the band promoted through benefit gigs and literature at their shows.

The band broke-up late in 2015, having just completed a seven-week tour of Europe.  It was an unexpected split, one that saw the band remain friends, but left them collectively feeling a sense of the unrealised that took some time to resolve.  Members went on to play in Four Hundred Years and Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s, before reforming last year.  If you’re interested in digging a little deeper and not least reliving the joys of DIY touring in the early 1990s, I can highly recommend an extensive 2014 audio interview with the band courtesy of loudfastphilly.com.

‘Intérêts complaisants à peine voilés, finiront vite exposés, Derrière les drones les accords et les traits demeurent les ruines, les vies broyées’ (La Loi Du Marché ) / ‘Barely veiled, self-serving interests will soon be exposed, Behind the drones, the agreements, and the lines, the ruins and shattered lives remain’ (The Law Of The Market)

Toulouse’s Nightwatchers are back with a new four-track 7-inch and follow up to 2024’s split album with Accidente.  They once again treat us to a lesson in thoroughly well crafted, darkly melodic punk, harnessing in equal measure a brooding post-punk sombreness and a bristling hardcore abrasiveness.  The result is both anthemic and austere in equal measure, with the evocatively layered vocals and flaring melodies bringing to mind the similarly deft songwriting of Red Dons.

Qu’importe La Mort (What Does Death Matter) is largely a meditation on war – its existential horror, the economic compulsions that drive it, and the self-serving myths that underpin much of the security narrative.  The hauntingly brooding opener, Atomisés (Atomised) contemplates the aftermath of the atomic bombing of Japan, the surging La Loi Du Marché tackles France’s complicity in the global arms trade, and the anarcho-tinged fury of Dommages Collatéraux (Collateral Damage) maps out the threats of rapid escalation in an increasingly insecure world.  The focus shifts to a reflection of the nature of grief on the melodically reflective closer, Malemort (Cruel Death), to round off a sharply impactful EP.

‘A faceless man waits for his wife, Outside the nail salon, And when she comes out, he makes her cry, Hell in every bed you lie in,  Hell in everyone you meet’ (Model Actress)

Hailing from Cleveland, Saw You With The Weeds is Suitor’s debut vinyl release.  First impressions are of precisely fashioned, darkly lush post-punk, a more expansive and fully rounded evolution from the band’s cassette-only 2021 debut, Communion.  Hooky, crystalline leads and mournfully chiming melodies lock in with a resolutely resonant rhythm section to richly dramatic effect.

Yet, as you immerse itself, two further striking elements begin to emerge, introducing some intriguing new dynamics.  First, is a searing vocal performance from Emma Shepard.  It segues effortlessly from the laconically nonchalant to the stridently melodic, shrouded throughout in an exuberant 1980s’ new wave sense of theatre.

Secondly, is the band’s willingness to lean into their more abrasive instincts with an unbridled relish, which draw in equal measure on noise punk and post-hardcore influences.  Indeed, this inclination yields some of the album’s most dramatic highlights.  The squalling shards of guitar that fuel the soaring chorus to Model Actress.  The slow burn gothic simmer of Factory.  The cymbal awash, feverishly cathartic escalation of Generator.  The finale to Televangelist, when Shepard simply let’s rip with a spine-tingling velocity.

The densely allusive, bleakly poetical lyrics also add another dimension.  They unfurl as if a film noir narration, one concerned with finding a revitalised resolve among friends and community amid the travails of failed relationships and the daily grind of a fracturing society.  The final touches are added courtesy of production from Sweeping Promises’ Caulfield Schnug, Suitor having struck up a bond with the duo while playing with them a few years back (indeed, Lira Mondal lends backing vocals to a couple of tracks as well).  It adroitly matches the album’s dexterous balancing of sheen and grit with a similar fluidity.

‘Finance my hands, Finance my brain, Finance my heart, Finance my pain, My body has a really high interest’ (Finance)

Dead end jobs and lives bought on credit.  Living hand to mouth as a wannabe dictator and his tech bro lackeys gorge at the trough.  We try and scroll away the anxiety on the same tools that entrench and enrich those same forces.  Who better to guide us through the fevered psyche of a nation on the brink than Cincinnati’s Choncy?

They are back with their third full-length blast of hardcore fuelled, wryly abrasive post-punk, following up 2024’s 20X Multiplier.  Scratchily agitated guitars writhe amid the taut bass lines and spryly resonant drums.  Everything is charged with a fizzing off-kilter energy, songs jerking and jolting with an almost demented sense of autonomy.

Meanwhile, the semi-shouted, sardonically repetitive vocals acerbically weave together an absurdist deconstruction of the twin forces of technology and consumerism as they contort, confine, and monetise our lives.  From the bristling convulsions of Scroller to the manic ‘la la las’ that grace the bouncing fervour of Job You Want, and then to the boisterously coiling Version Of A Version and the sinuously caustic climax of Finance, the energy, despite the palpable air of frustrated despondency, is utterly irrepressible.

‘The emergency cannot be identified until it is taking place and reflected in your eyes, The peril is presented face-to-face, You know your own lies’ (No Crisis Goes To Waste)

We often speak of disasters as if they are exceptional moments. In reality, they – and the frequently exploitative responses to them – are often rooted in long entrenched socio-economic inequalities.  The notion of the unforeseeable tragedy becomes society’s defence mechanism to absolve itself from responsibility.  Our refusal to confront these realities, from climate catastrophe to the surveillance state, forms the bleakly dystopian backdrop to Iris Paralysis’ fourth album, Extinguish The Sun.

It sees the Bielefeld / London synth duo, featuring Tobo Schazmann on electronics and Marco Palumbo (Trenchkoat / Zuletzt) on vocals, continue to hone their fusion of post-punk and dark wave.  It also sees the band lean more assuredly into their 1980s’ new wave influences, introducing a more pronounced sense of drama to their aesthetic.

The synths coldly pulse with a quivering elasticity underpinned by the crisply resonant, motorik percussion.  Meanwhile, the gothically drawled, often layered vocals survey a world knowingly suffocating itself with the detached disdain and darkly evocative imagery of one who long ago lost hope in humanity’s potential for redemption.

The slyly enticing invitation of Well-Rehearsed Future and the pulsating Inferiority Complex set the tone for the album, a restless joust between emotions of disenchanted resignation and insidiously infectious songcraft.  It is one effortlessly fermented by the fevered oscillations of No Crisis Goes To Waste and Retroflex View, before the tensely throbbing Eels Of Deceit.