Something Looming is the first release from London’s Marcel Wave (featuring members of Sauna Youth and Cold Pumas) and what a thoroughly well-realised debut it proves to be.

Taut, clean guitars and a swinging, supple rhythm section provide the perfect foundation for the more esoteric elements of the band’s sound – organ and vocals.  The former veers from the jauntily uplifting to the jarringly discordant, injecting each track with its own distinctive atmosphere.  The latter take centre stage throughout, wryly observed and largely spoken word, they blend the melodically impassioned with the coldly angry and elegiacally poetic to memorable effect.

The buoyantly infectious Barrow Boys delves into the redevelopment of London’s Docklands, which established the template for selling off public land at a discount to developers – fuelling the city’s relentless exploitation by real estate capital (‘Have you ever had anything slip through your hand, like a grain of sand?’).  Similarly, the darkly brooding Where There’s Muck There’s Brass tells the tale of notorious Yorkshire architect / developer, John Poulson, who was jailed for corruption in 1974 (‘Had grubby fingers in many pies, bought off council officials, to build shoddy houses, houses that didn’t last’), and his bleak legacy in Bradford.

Discount Centre is a brilliantly off-kilter evocation of the urban edgelands that have subsequently emerged (‘I’m tired of all this greyscale, and drab retail parks’), and the hollowed-out town centres that then result are summoned in Great British High St (‘I used to go to Wimpy, eat with a knife and fork’).  Meanwhile, the uneasily discordant Mudlarks (‘What’s lost is recovered by time, a lapping wave, a careful eye’) and the vibrantly pulsating Stop/Continue (‘Now it laughs as it glides past, the ruins of our industrial past’) elicit voices from our history through the banks of the River Thames and deindustrialisation respectively.  And all rounded off with the band’s own rather stunning artwork.

British Columbia’s Earth Ball take their vinyl bow on It’s Yours and it proves a vibrant demonstration of the power of improvisation and experimentation.

I had the good fortune of catching Earth Ball on their recent UK tour.  The night I was able to get along to was billed as an improv show, which did set some of my more insular alarm bells ringing.  Said bells began to clang even louder, when I arrived at Cafe Oto in Dalston to see chairs arranged at the front (thankfully, there was plenty of standing room behind). But any reservations were soon blown away.

The band played three separate thirty-minute segments, collaborating with different artists in the first two, before everyone came together for the final set.  It was a remarkably immersive experience, as waves of instrumentation were incrementally layered upon one another, the momentum relentlessly ratcheted up, and the disparate strands eventually converging as one to a crescendo verging on industrial intensity, before then steadily deconstructing again to end on a haunting whisper.

And this is a pattern that similarly defines the band’s new album, It’s Yours.  This shouldn’t, perhaps, be surprising as the album’s writing process was also entirely improvisational.  The resonant bass and drums provide the band’s propulsion, their patterns often rooted in jazz, before locking into passages of more methodical, mechanical fervour.  Meanwhile, the saxophone and guitar weave their individual patterns, squalling, skronking, dissonant, and yet somehow organically intertwined, while semi-shouted vocals from the band’s co-vocalists occasionally emerge from the sonic barrage.

Two things struck me as I listened to the album and thought back to how the show evolved.  Firstly, is the importance of restraint when playing in an improvisational setting.  The temptation to let rip at all times must be pretty profound, but the key is of course discipline, knowing when to play, when not to, when to go full bore, and when to offer more subtle accenting.  And in this regard, hats off to Earth Ball’s saxophonist in particular, who perfectly judges his contributions throughout the evolving songs.

The second is around the nature of experimentation itself.  It is in the trying of new things that we discover what works and what doesn’t, and also in the act of trying that we stumble on new ideas and techniques.  And by seeing it live, it brought greater clarity to understanding how the album itself must have developed. Two particular moments are brought vividly to mind.  One, when the bass was played with what looked like a hand-held trident, it created a surge of shuddering, reverberating velocity.  Then two, when the guest pianist reached into the guts of his piano to pluck the strings directly – the resultant sound conjured visions of a big, angry demon being garrotted by a much smaller but considerably meaner one.

While comprising six tracks across its 42-minute run-time, It’s Yours is, perhaps, best understood as a single serpentine movement, one that swings from moments of almost feral discordance to passages of quietly beautiful introspection.  At times, it swirls and seethes in untold directions, and at others, it forges grooves of utterly infectious intensity.  It’s a journey that is definitely worth taking.

‘Nothing, nothing done for the right reason…We’re just slaves to greed, ignorance, manipulation…Where once cogs turned, now unseen…Truth is hidden, obscured by a screen’ (In The Stone)

Normil Hawaiians are a post-punk collective hailing from South London, who were initially active between 1979 and 1986.  They released three LPs and a raft of EPs during their original incarnation, a period during which their sound evolved in increasingly experimental directions.  The 2015 release by Upset The Rhythm of the band’s ‘lost’ album, Return of The Ranters, which was recorded in 1984/85, inspired the band to start playing music together again.  A series of live shows and new 7-inch in 2020 followed, before the band convened to record their first new album in nearly forty years.

The result is an album that stays true to the band’s latter-day roots of improvisation and experimentation, expertly fusing elements of ambient drone, driving motorik beats, and haunting folk.  The result is a shimmering, immersive soundscape defined by lush yet sparingly deployed instrumentation.  The songs take on an almost spectral quality as they weave together samples, interludes, and passages of spoken word to hypnotic effect, simultaneously both fragile and all-enveloping.

The album’s lyrical focus is set by the opening tracks Exiles and Ghosts of Ballochroy.  The former using samples to explore the plight of migrants, the latter darkly allusive poetry narrated by Scottish poet Rodney Relax to skewer the inequality riven through our society.  These are themes that are returned to on the meditative We Stand Together and the cosmic-tinged Big City Sky.  But, perhaps, the stand-out tracks are the beautiful, mournfully layered In The Stone and the more personal Back Home To The Stars, a thoroughly moving tribute to band member Mark Tyler who died during the recording of the album.

‘無関心の代償 見捨てられた街 魂の行方が お前に見えるか？’ / ‘The price of indifference, the forsaken city, can you see where the souls are going?’ (Realm)

Tokyo’s Klonns have released a slew of EPs since their formation in 2016, most recently 2022’s Crow, and now take their full-length bow on Heaven.  Over this period, the band’s sound has been one of constant evolution revolving around their core hardcore foundations, drawing initially on black metal and then d-beat.  Their current iteration feels leaner, less chaotic but still darkly metallic – think the negative hardcore ferocity of say Gehenna refracted through the prism of the mosh-inducing burliness of late 1980s’ East Coast hardcore and you will begin to get a sense of where we are at.

Having caught the band’s searing live performance in London a few weeks back, my expectations were running pretty high, and I’m pleased to say that they have not been disappointed.  Book-ended by two eerily rhythmic ambient electronic tracks is a brutally honed hardcore onslaught that is relentless in its intensity as blackened vocals and a swaggering rhythm section provide the perfect foils to the waves of surging metallic riffage.

The savage opening riff to Heathen sets the tone for the opening side with the bruising breakdown of Beherit and searing guest vocals courtesy of Sailor Kannako that bring Realm to a crushing crescendo, ensuring that there is no respite.  The pace does not dim on the flip side with stand-out moments including the stomping Replica and the savage closing title track.  Dual English and Japanese lyrics explore themes of regret, frustration, and despair through often bleakly allusive imagery.

‘Hides the lie that corrupted all your inside, Hides a code you could never crack, Hides a road you would never walk, While you sit in the joy of your reluctance, Wrath reloads its gun’ (Synchronicity)

Hailing from Rome, Sect Mark are back with their second full-length, Self-Obliteration, and follow-up to 2018’s Worship.  And have no fear, we are in for another dose of unbridled hardcore fury.  Raw, venomous, echo tinged vocals are intertwined with darkly menacing guitars and a ruthlessly precise rhythm section to create a bleakly dystopian atmosphere.

The album takes its philosophical lead from the Arthur Rimbaud poem Fêtes de la Faim (Feast of Hunger): ‘Eat, the stones that a poor man breaks, The old church masonry, Boulders, children of the floods, Loaves lying in the grey valleys’.  It primes the album’s urgent, primal call for change that manifests itself in the visceral, poetically violent lyrical imagery of social unrest and conflict as captured by Hand Don’t Feed (‘You gave us nothing, now we’ll pay back, Hand don’t feed, it never did’) and Denied Self (‘And all parades are beautiful when you end up hanged’).

The squalling, stomping opener, Traitor, sets the scene perfectly for the rabid barrage that follows.  Other stand-out moments include the barbarous eruption that is Fracture and the searing riffage that defines the utterly fierce Leech and Denied Self.

‘Deceiving only those afraid to say you’re faking, Which crime is more corrupt? It’s the cover up, Can’t you see the obvious harm underneath the charm?’ (Emperor)

Smell Of Money is the debut full-length from Texas three-piece, Wet Dip.  It catches you off guard from the very start as the opening track Rollercoaster kicks off with a brief, melodically sung vignette based on Dionne Warwick’s Valley Of Dolls and closes with the haunting cry of ‘When will I know, How will I know, When will I know why?’.  And from that point onwards the album relentlessly, restlessly writhes, its convulsions as organic as they are unexpected.

The guitar is largely skeletal, scratchy, abrasive.  The rhythm section is anxious, jittery, uneasy yet also, at times, undeniably infectious.  This stripped back palette provides the perfect backdrop to an utterly virtuoso vocal performance.  Alternating between Spanish and English, it sweeps from the stridently melodic to sardonically detached spoken word, from nursery rhyme innocence to the utterly venomous.

The track list includes two covers, Silver by The Pixies and Pelo Sulelto by Gloria Trevi, that are both so vividly reimagined by the band that they are absorbed seamlessly into the album’s sonic trajectory.  However, the highlights are Wet Dip’s own compositions – the surging Rollercoaster, the tensely juddering yet catchy Stray, the verging on jaunty Emperor, the discordant eruption that is Killfloor, with its memorable mantra, ‘Smells like shit, That’s the smell of money’.

The cover art pastiche of Husker Dü’s Zen Arcade (the two central silhouettes are now brawling), and the album title itself, leave you in little doubt that Citric Dummies don’t take themselves entirely seriously.

This is the Minneapolis’ trios fourth full-length and continues to build on the band’s trademark qualities.  Musically, we are talking raucous melodic punk delivered with a healthy hardcore aggression and a dash of rock’n’roll swagger. Highlights include the burly I’m Gonna Punch Larry Bird, Drugs In The Snow with its squalling saxophone, and the decidedly catchy Die Alone.

Lyrically, we have a swirling melting pot of the nihilistic on Everyone I Know Will Forget Me (‘Told my doctor I want to die, Asked my lawyer if he’d kill me’), the cynical on Being Male Is Embarrassing (‘Are these lyrics real, or am I just virtue suh-suh-signalling’), and the knowing on I Don’t Want to Live [Anymore] (‘This riff was lifted from The Fall, Just thought you should know’).  And while some of the songs are immersed in satirising pop culture, darker themes of depression and anxiety shape many of the tracks, such as My True Love Is Depression and I’m Gonna Kill Myself (At The Co-op), even if the handling remains firmly tongue-in-cheek.

‘In the age of our self-made, Lying heads of fallen state, No one mentioning the change of season, Or the killing floor of latter days’ (Outsider)

As acoustic guitar swells beneath the skeletal, sombre riff that defines opener Chains, and the hoarsely melodic vocals kick-in, strident yet flecked with hints of fragility, you can’t help but be lured into its Southern Gothic tinged embrace.  And what follows is an album that melds folk and 1970s’ rock influences to striking effect, as flourishes of brass, string, and mouth organ flare through the darkly melancholic guitars and propulsively limber rhythm section.

The overarching atmosphere is one of gloomy pragmatism that is forged of a certain world weariness, yet still resolute in its belief that all is not yet lost.  This creates a dynamic that is imbued with a notable sense of drama as it seamlessly swings from the rollicking Stone Love to the melancholy drenched Land Of The Blind with its plaintive, haunting closing mantra of ‘Somebody help me please’.  Similarly, the bleakly jaunty Dawning feeds into the powerfully surging Outsider, with the impetus never sagging for even a moment, before the ambitiously expansive Never Ending builds slowly but relentlessly, before unleashing its psychedelia fuelled, choral embellished, crescendo.

This is my first encounter with The Ar-Kaics, who intriguingly feature members of pageninetynine and City of Caterpillar, but it is actually their fourth full-length since the band took their recording bow in 2013.  Diving into the Virginia band’s discography, their earlier records were rooted much more firmly in sixties-inspired garage punk, and whilst shadows of this heritage can still be traced, See The World On Fire feels very much like a band striding assuredly in tantalising new directions.

‘I choose where I live, I choose when I die, When I pay my interest, Everything is mine, My office is big and my wallet is fat, Tell my wife I don’t want to chat’ (Opportunity Cost)

Hailing from Cincinnati, 20X Multiplier is Choncy’s debut vinyl release following on from last year’s cassette-only Community Chest.  Taut, angular guitars are underpinned by a relentlessly precise rhythm section, as the band animate a thoroughly abrasive yet undeniably infectious blend of bristling hardcore propelled post-punk.  Writhing solos and occasional electronic flare-ups fashion an air of juddering, jolting unease.

Semi-shouted, rhythmically repetitive vocals further intensify this anxious, off-kilter energy.  Themes of economic exploitation, modern day workplace culture, the financialisation of healthcare, and the wider neoliberal hollowing out of society are sardonically skewered on tracks such as the fiercely serpentine Opportunity Cost, the surging Dead Meat, and the frenzied, organ fuelled Default.

‘Head strong people get the first foot in the door, Set the pace and say we’re all too slow, Mundane evil seems less rotten at its core, All just one less thing I’ll never know’ (I Idled)

Permanent Present Tense is the debut full-length from New York’s The Follies and is an exploration of shimmering, melodically charged power pop. When scanning the past projects of The Follies’ members, spanning as they do, amongst others, The Rival Mob (Evan Radigan, guitar and vocals), Anasazi (Jess Poplawski, bass and vocals), Ajax (Chris Bowman, drums) and Vexx (Mike Liebman, guitar), this may come as something of a surprise.  But immerse yourself a little deeper and the outlines of this rich New York hardcore punk heritage begin to reveal themselves in the tensile strength around which of each of these tightly crafted, dynamically structured ten tracks are honed.

Bright, jangly guitars and an energetically lissom rhythm section are entwined with alternating dual vocalists and waves of backing harmonies as accents of Britpop and country twang flare-up.  An intriguing contradiction lies at the heart of the band’s sound that is simultaneously imbued with an unhurried, languid pacing and a heartily robust groove.  This blend is also reflected in their thoughtful lyrical reflections on everyday life, which walk a line of positive yet guarded pragmatism, neither darkly resigned nor overly optimistic.  The result is an album that swells organically through its discreet changes in tempo, from the vibrant opener I Idled to the sombrely strident You’d Have To Ask Them, and from the assertive Brick By Brick to the jauntily layered Whatever Happened.

Olympia’s Lysol are back strutting their rock’n’roll infused hardcore punk and Down The Street is their follow-up EP to 2021’s full-length, Soup For The Family.

Lysol have now been active for nearly a decade with two full-lengths, and now this third EP under their belt.  The fact that these releases span labels ranging from Deranged to Feel It, by way of Total Punk and Neck Chop, speaks to the band’s genre-straddling sound.  And while the emphasis may shift from release to release, the core fundamentals remain unchanged as they wed a fierce hardcore intensity to their garage rock sensibilities – a touch ragged around the edges, more muscular than you might anticipate.  As ever, the four tracks of Down The Street are fuelled by a raucous, nihilistic energy that, perhaps, reaches its zenith on the rampaging opener Sonic Thrill and the utterly rollicking, groove-laden 15MG.

‘The pain of nostalgia is too much sometimes, It rears its head on these lonely nights, When my mind starts to wander and reminisce, About the goals we had and things we did.  Too naïve to appreciate what we held in our fingertips’ (Living In The Meantime)

This album transported me back to what was a rather fertile period for US hardcore in the early to mid-2000s.  A wave of bands from Stay Gold to Have Heart, and from Modern Life Is War to Verse, emerged to wrestle the genre back from at what at the time felt like the suffocating grip of metalcore.  A leaner metallic edge was retained but with a healthy reinjection of melodicism, and a return to lyrics with an avowed social awareness that spanned both the political and personal.  By the time this renaissance began to take on new forms at the end of the decade, it felt like an important reconnection with hardcore’s roots had been forged.

Ever since, attempts to resurrect this particular tradition have largely proven unsuccessful.  It was almost as if it took the context of that specific time to ignite just the right blend of aggression and reflection.  But, have no doubt that Winnipeg’s Meantime have nailed it where many have failed.  You sense that they have absorbed their influences so instinctually that they are able to reimagine them with an unbridled honesty.

Living In The Meantime is the band’s debut full-length.  It bristles with intensity as heartfelt vocals explore largely introspective themes of frustration and anxiety, while underpinned by thoroughly well-crafted, high energy hardcore laced with flourishes of dark melody and gang vocals that are organically entwined throughout.  The result is an album that skilfully fuses the burly aggression of Blue Monday with the mournful sensibilities of Sinking Ships and Go It Alone’s sense of sonic drama.  Stand-out moments include the melancholy saturated Lacerate (featuring guest vocals from Home Front’s Graeme MacKinnon) and Immured as well the fierce Direction and the rampaging title track that brings proceedings to an exuberant close.

‘Stealing more of our rights, They’ve stifled us once again, You have no rights, We must stand up for all humankind, The courts…are marching…into our bodies’ (No Rights)

Washington DC’s Revolution Summer era of hardcore has been a rich source of inspiration for many bands, but some contemporary interpretations struggle to match the underlying intensity that originally fuelled this sound in the mid to late 1980s.  Thankfully, there are no such misgivings with Chula Vista’s Crashing Forward.

Silent All These Years, the band’s debut release, displays an innate understanding of its influences, but also has its own distinctive take on them and one that burns with positive urgency.  Energetically impassioned vocals interlace with cleanly melodic yet muscular guitars and a tight, punchy rhythm section.  The strident opener No Rights and surging Surveillance, with a memorable guest vocal appearance courtesy of Rob Moran (Unbroken / Narrows), prove particular highlights.

Lyrically, the band focuses on the political on Side A – abortion rights (No Rights), technocracy (Digital Death), the surveillance state (Surveillance), and the politics of division (Dissemble) – and more personal themes of connection and forging bonds on the flipside.  Think, perhaps, of fusing Dag Nasty with Swiz, adding a touch of Verbal Assault and giving it a hearty rejuvenating shake, and you’ll be heading in the right direction.

Hailing from Fullerton, California, Intent represents the debut full-length release from Major Pain following their 2022 debut EP, Demo ’22.

Slab-like metallic riffage, plentifully laced with flourishes of sombre melody, are anchored by a powerfully supple rhythm section.  Meanwhile, venomously rhythmic, growled vocals explore themes of fighting through life’s hardships on M.P.S (‘Life losts it shine throughout the years, Found no relief yet I’m still here’), surviving our exploitative economic system on Short Change II (‘Short on time, money, and health, Too hard not to neglect myself’), and channelling grief on Intent (‘No easy way to live and cope, Living not for me but for us both’).

Stand-out tracks include the stomping Crazy Horse, Burning Spirit and its fierce solo-led breakdown, the brutally staccato Fate’s Hand, and the crushing closer of a title track.  Thoroughly well-executed metallic hardcore then, with a satisfyingly fluid dynamic and a passing nod to the New York scene of the late 1980s, in particular, perhaps, Killing Time and Outburst.

‘Come on and let’s settle down and settle in, To the warmth of Armageddon, And the song of endless grinding gears, Bled bone dry, automized, docile, feckless, and numb’ (Futurability?)

Pop-punk always seems like one of those things that should be easy to do, having almost a throwaway quality to it.  But as with most things that seem thrown together, there is rather a lot more going on than first meets the eye and to do it really well is no easy task.  However, Southern California’s No Plan prove themselves more than up for the challenge.

The band’s pedigree is actually one rooted very much in the hardcore scene featuring as they do, Eva Hall (Gather / Power Alone), Matt Ants (Headcount), Dave Itow (Berthold City), Whitney Marshall (Ursula), and Eagle Barber (Stay Gold).  Their debut 2022 self-titled EP felt very much like the band was trying on their new sound for size, not necessarily tentatively, but not yet fully confident in their new surrounds.

Such inhibitions are now assuredly thrown to one side and their new full-length Lotsa Potential sees the band deliver a fully realised, catchily melodic slice of pop-punk.  Tightly honed songs, lean guitars, and a crisply punchy rhythm section provide the perfect backdrop for the rasping vocal delivery.  And all the while the band’s hardcore roots ensure that they imbue proceedings with a robust aggression.  Similarly, socially aware lyrics tackle themes of economic exploitation (Futurability?), finding hope in amongst the social carnage (No Planthem), abortion rights (Doesn’t Matter Why) as well as more introspective reflections on Law Of Motion and Wrong.  Highlights include the raucous No Planthem and blistering Rich Kids On Anarchy, before closing with a rousing cover of Big Mouth by 1990s’ Californian pop-punk band, The Muffs.

‘Who’s to blame? No one but myself, I’m burning in this private hell, Fall to my knees, Faced with defeat, A slave to this feeling, I’ll never be free’ (State of Regression)

When starting up a distro, one of the disciplines you soon teach yourself is to focus on newer releases rather than being lured into older ones, even if you absolutely loved them.  I rather broke that rule when I couldn’t resist picking up Constructing A War Against You, the 2022 debut vinyl release from San Jose’s Field Of Flames.  But trust me, this is a rather fine slab of metallic hardcore.

The album is a compilation of the same-titled 2022 EP on side A with 2021’s cassette-only Remnants Of A Collapsed Existence on the flipside.  As the menacing opening riff to The Decision builds, you sense that things are going to get very intense indeed.  What follows is as unrelenting as it is thoroughly well-crafted – raw, impassioned vocals and darkly sinister metallic riffage interlaced with swells of bleakly melancholic melody and passages of ominous spoken word.

Echoes of the early 1990’s pioneers of the genre, such as Undertow and Unbroken (the album actually closes with a fierce cover of the latter’s Blanket), are elicited but clearly stamped with Field Of Flames’ own very distinctive take.  Personal highlights are, perhaps, the searing Besiege, and the brutally ferocious Burn Your World.  You can quite literally feel the stage divers whistling over your head.

‘My carried weight is everything, Am I not enough for who I am today? Why do I feel myself wearing thin (wearing thin)? Everyday I’m like a stranger in my own skin’ (Leave)

Orange County’s Whirlwind take their bow on their debut full-length, Lasting Peace.  A robustly resonant rhythm section provides the groundwork, while waves of surging, muscular metallic riffage are unfurled, accented throughout by flares of sombre melody.  Rhythmically roared vocals frequently display an urgent, almost fraught dimension that perfectly reflects the band’s lyrical concerns of self-doubt, frustration, and regret.

The song writing is thoughtfully structured, ensuring that while monolithically heavy, the onslaught retains a satisfyingly fluid dynamic with echoes of Foundation and Chokehold.  Stand-out moments are, perhaps, the rampaging Empty Hopes (including some fiercely infectious bass work) and the title track that brings the album to an absolutely crushing finale.

‘Heal my pain before you fade away, Bury my shame deep before you fade away’ (Serenity)

Tokyo’s Kriegshög are back with their first full-length since their self-titled debut some 14 years ago, and their first release since 2019’s steamroller of a 7-inch, Paint It Black.  And Love & Revenge very much continues to build on the transition heralded by the latter.  So, gone is the wall of noise discordance that defined their earliest releases.  The emphasis is now on unfurling a crushingly heavy groove – the unrelenting, almost hypnotic rhythm section locks in the bottom end while the guitars unleash waves of muscular, galloping riffage as well as occasional flourishes of dark melody, most notably the fiercely raucous finale to Grey Agony.  The largely Japanese vocals retain their growled intensity as they explore a mind plunged into a maze of anxiety, shame, and frustration.

The key though is the band’s success in imbuing this groove not only with a monolithic heaviness, but with a dynamic fluidity that ensures that you can’t help but move.  The rhythmically visceral P.S.M (Pure Slave Mind) and the infectiously, fist pumping Grey Agony perfectly capture this potent blend as does the fiercely staccato 眠らない身体 (The Body That Never Sleeps) and the utterly rollicking, bass-driven title track.  Album closer 冷たい人間 (Cold Person) brings matters to a fitting climax, melding a surging, strident central riff with a swinging bass line to pulverising effect.

Hailing from Fredericksburg, Virginia, Infant Island return with their fourth full-length, Obsidian Wreath, and continue to forge a sonically dramatic fusion of emotional hardcore and black metal.

Raw, impassioned vocals partner with tremolo-heavy guitars that segue seamlessly from the harshly metallic to passages of warmly contemplative beauty, while underpinned by a rhythm section that is equal parts utter fury and lithe subtlety.  This aural battery is further complemented by ambient programming, most notably on the noise infused Found Hand, and orchestral flourishes that are used sparingly but astutely to inject further emotional heft.

The band prove equally adept at sweeping from the muscular eruptions of ferocious opener Another Cycle, the blast beat fuelled Fulfilled, and the blistering Unrelenting to more expansive, at times, almost baroque explorations.  The anthemic gang vocals that bring Veil to a soaringly cathartic crescendo and the haunting, whispered vocal opening to Kindling, courtesy of Greet Death, are both passages of striking impact.

Lyrically, the band examine through often darkly allusive imagery our distorted socio-economic priorities on Fulfilled (‘How could you spare to inconvenience your comfort?’) and a sense of bleak inevitability regarding the world’s environmental fate on Kindling (‘Kindling our lonely fires, we nurture our frozen dreams’).  But this is not a tale of resigned defeat but rather one of fierce defiance on Unrelenting (‘Our burning embers raging against you’) and hope that all is not yet lost on Veil (‘All darkness, all blood, all cynics: for what? The world is enough’).

‘Por mi puedes seguir llorando, La verdad, esto es aburrido, Ese lament sordo me incordia, Ese payaso nunca volverá, El disfruta de tu dolor’ (El Mundo Sigue) ‘For me, you can continue crying, The truth is, this is boring, That dull lament bothers me, That clown will never return, He enjoys your pain’ (The World Goes On)

Barcelona’s Fuera De Sektor, featuring members of Barrera and Algara, make their vinyl debut on Juegos Prohibidos (Forbidden Games).   Bright, clear guitars, with a touch of wah wah distortion, unfurl waves of surf-infused, angular post-punk and soaring solos that will have those so inclined soon dusting off their air guitars, all underpinned by a crisply punchy rhythm section.  Centre stage though is, perhaps, the clean sung Spanish vocals – strident yet nuanced, melodic yet fierce, they inject a vibrant emotional individuality to each track.

The end result is a languidly shimmering, yet furiously energised dynamic.  From the bristling Lejos De Casa (Far From Home) to the more darkly sombre Ser Una Más (Be One More), and from the swinging Sábanas Viejas (Old Sheets) to the seething Peligroso Animal (Dangerous Animal), the band hone a series of leanly crafted eruptions.  And beneath the luminous, uplifting veneer lie darkly poetical tales of heartbreak and rejection, compulsion and desire.

‘Ez a zaj megöli a fasizmust, Kikapcsolja a kapitalizmus, Felszámolja a hatalmat ez a zaj enni ad, Ez a zaj tisztítja a levegőt, Ez a zaj törli el a határokat, ez a zaj vágja át a korlátokat’ (This Noise) ‘This noise kills fascism, turns off capitalism, abolishes power, This noise feeds us, This noise cleans the air, This noise erases borders, This noise cuts through barriers’ (This Noise)

A little while back, I wrote about some of the ideas explored by Bill Peel in his book Tonight It’s A World We Bury (Heretical Distortions).  Principal among them was the idea of distortion and its function in music.  How aural antagonism can create a community for the exchange of ideas, one that continually regenerates by constructing difference through creativity.

And let’s be clear, Budapest’s Balta are the very definition of distortion.  On this their second EP, Mindenki Mindig Minden Ellen (Everyone Always against Everything) and follow-up to 2022’s Rendszerszintű Agybasz​á​s (Systemic Brainwashing), the duo launch an onslaught of unrelenting dissonance.  Frantic vocals that occasionally dissolve into raging cries of undiluted despair, and rabid, primitive drumming are enveloped in waves of discordant guitar, raw and blown-out.  Meanwhile, brief flares of melody and fleeting solos leaven the wall of noise as the band rampage through nine tracks in 10 minutes.

And this relentless distortion serves as the ideal medium for the band’s anti-authoritarian message as they tackle themes of creating personal autonomy (Nagyon Sajnálom / I’m So Sorry), how governing rationalites saturate our thinking (Minden Hiedelem / All Is A Belief), and capitalism’s hollowing out of society (Patkány Élet / Rat Life).

Montreal’s Collapsed and Linköping’s Adrestia are both bands who forge a brutal fusion of galloping d-beat crust punk with early 1990s’ death metal influences and they have come together for a new split full-length, Antitheism.

‘Sounds of sirens, The die is cast, New blood is shed, By ghosts from the past’ (The Ghosts Of Mariupol, Adrestia)

Side A is in the hands of Adrestia.  This is their sixth full-length / split album since their 2016 debut, The Art Of Modern Warfare, with many of their earlier releases having focused on highlighting the Kurdish pursuit of independence in Rojava.  There is an avowedly metallic edge to their crust onslaught.  The harsh rasping vocals, darkly bleak melodies, and fierce delivery conjure spectres of Extreme Aggression-era Kreator, not least on the blistering opener The Ghosts Of Mariupol, which focuses on the horrors of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.  The primary lyrical concerns of the balance of their tracks, such as the stomping Nail In The Coffin and the slab-like God Should Pray For Your Forgiveness, are the threats from religious fundamentalism and the more insidious day-to-today repressions that can be inflicted by religious institutions.

‘Kept in crates and cages, A life born to be killed, Locked behind closed doors, Where they hide all the shame’ (Asunder, Collapsed)

The flipside sees Collapsed take centre stage, with this the follow-up to their 2020 self-debut full-length.  The band blend doom infused death metal rhythm guitars and growled, guttural vocals with a more d-beat accented rhythm section and flourishes of neo-crust melodicism, as perfectly captured by the ferocious opener Global Collapse, with its echoes of Spiritual Healing-era Death, and the melancholy riven Inherent Distrust.  Lyrically, the band explore themes of environmental catastrophe (Global Collapse), animal rights (Asunder), and social atomisation (Controlled Extinction).  Meanwhile, Blood On The Roots is a tribute to American songwriter Abel Meeropol and his renowned poem against racial injustice, Strange Fruit (1937), that was later set to music by Meeropol and recorded by Billie Holiday in 1939.