‘Ja niby jestem tutaj, Ale nie ma mnie, Marzę o powrocie, I nie rozpoznasz mnie’ (Bezsenność) / ‘I’m supposedly here, But I’m not, I dream of returning, And you won’t recognise me’ (Insomnia)

Belgrado underwent something of a dramatic reimagining between 2016’s Obraz (Image) and their fourth album, 2023’s Intra Apogeum (Enter The Apogee).  Gone was the dark, guitar driven post-punk and in its place was a rather more brightly propulsive, synth fuelled incarnation.  This reinvention is now further embedded on the Barcelona band’s beguiling new four track 12-inch, El Encuentro (The Meeting).

The drums have again been shorn in favour of crisply motorik programmed percussion and then intertwined with thickly throbbing bass lines.  Pulsing synths now form the melodic core, displaying an intriguing ability to glow warmly and seethe icily as the mood shifts.  The resulting soundtrack has an almost cinematic quality, clinical yet catchy and ineffably danceable.

Yet, beneath the surface level sheen, there also resides a languid melancholy that calls back to the band’s origins.  The shards of shimmering guitar and the hauntingly ethereal Polish vocals infuse the likes of Moje Myśli (My Thoughts) and Labirynt Marzeń (Labyrinth Of Dreams) with a hazily evocative, hallucinatory sense of the unrequited and the unresolved.

The EP also comes with a twenty-page lyric booklet that builds on the theme of the modernist cover art to explore the importance of music and culture in building towards a more equitable and just world.

‘I’m suffocating and evaporating, The present is squeezed to dust, Snow is melting down in my cup, And I fill my bottle with your sweat’ (Drip)

Deep Fried Bitches is the debut album from Parisian trio My Dog’s A Bear.  It is an exploration of the experimental hinterlands of post-hardcore, laced through with a distinctive art punk inclination. As such, it marries two intriguingly contrasting elements.

The first is the sense of space, a willingness to allow the songs to breathe and find their own equilibrium.  This expansiveness is nurtured by the resonant clarity of the production – the warm thrum of the bass lines, the crystalline guitar, and the crisp punch of the percussion (deliciously accented by the deft cymbal work) – which feels lush yet somehow spartan at the same time.

The second is a restless sense of invention that seems to assert itself ever more confidently, almost as if the album is deconstructing itself as it progresses.  Flirtations with no wave minimalism and noise rock fervour are indulged with equal relish.

Meanwhile, the lead vocals segue from the stridently melodic to the conspiratorially whispered, aided and abetted by the energetically off-kilter backing.  They delve with a fractured obliqueness into nightmarish web of climatic breakdown, predatory behaviours, and vulnerability in the face of an exploitative economic system.

From the tautly convulsing opener Drip to the brooding escalation of Warm And Soft and the agitated exultations of Chain Hoist, it proves an entrancing blend.  One that lulls you into its languorously unfurling soundscapes, before jarring you back to reality with an unapologetic delight.

‘Good things may pass away with time, And good people can be hard to find, Until you find them, In yourself’ (Can’t Kill The Love)

The Love is an album that speaks to something that often seems to be in short supply in our lives at the moment.  A willingness to walk in someone else’s shoes for just a moment.  To take a breath and consider what struggles others may be confronting.  To not allow ourselves to be sucked into the knee jerk intolerance that feels so pervasive.  To resist the almost constant pressure from those seeking scapegoats to punch down on those at the margins.

Destiny Bond are back with their second album and follow-up to 2023’s Be My Vengeance.  The heart of the Denver band’s sound still resides in high octane, youth crew leaning melodic hardcore.  The rhythm section is as fiercely propulsive, the gang vocals as vigorously robust, as this would imply.  Yet amid its more muscular eruptions, the rhythm guitar often has a looser, more ragged texture than might be expected, while the solos fizz with a notable rock’n’roll strut.

What strikes most though is the sheer verve of delivery.  It brims with an unbridled energy and sincerity that is tied together by the galloping, rasping, yelping vocals.  Rooted in the trans experiences of two of the band members, they call universally on us to be more generous spirited to both those around us and, indeed, to ourselves.  It is a breathless ride with the ferociously freewheeling Free Me, the metallic slabs of Debt Perception, and the raucously oscillating Fix capturing the spirit particularly vividly.

‘Black mold seeps while I wake from fever dreams, Walls cracked, sink broken in this city full of thieves, All dignity lost while I break my back’ (Scumlord)

Hailing from San Francisco, and featuring members of Everybody Row, Tørsö, and Profile among others, Urban Sprawl have always felt like a band shaped very explicitly by their home city.  Or at least, by that stratum of hyper-financialised ‘global cities’ that have been relentlessly contorted to serve the needs of capital rather than their communities.

They are now back with their third EP, following up 2021’s Concrete Altar, and the savagely growled vocals once again dive into the entrenched inequalities of exploitative rentiers, the hollowing out of gentrification, and the militarised violence that is increasingly riven through US civic society.

The foundations of the band’s sound remain similarly steadfast.  A burly USHC base is interwoven with both d-beat and UK82 influences, before being fiercely moulded through a more metallic crucible.  Each of the six tracks lands with a bone shuddering velocity, with the bass fuelled Scumlord and the stomping fury of Compulsion being my personal highlights.

‘Así que y la solucion fue el neoliberalismo? Así que la democracie existe en realidad? Así que el ejercito defiende al pueblo? Así que los medios nos dicen la verad?’/ ‘So the solution was neoliberalism? So democracy actually exists? So the army defends the people? So the media tells us the truth?’ (EZLN)

Repression of Mexico’s Indigenous population has been endemic since colonial times, morphing from military brutality to slow economic violence.  This entrenched socio-economic marginalisation dramatically worsened as neoliberalism arrived in Mexico during the 1980s.   In response, rural communities began to explore political alternatives – Zapatismo – rooted in land reform, class struggle, and communitarian organisation, filtered through the lens of their Indigenous identity.

Mexico’s neoliberal turn culminated in the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, which sparked the Zapatistas in the southern state of Chiapas to declare war on the Mexican government.  The armed struggle lasted 12 days before an agreement was reached that granted greater autonomy to rural municipalities.  It was a system that survived under informal Zapatistas stewardship until its dissolution in 2023, as a direct result of escalating cartel violence.

Revolución X were a band born of that Zapatistas movement in the US border state of Chihuahua.  They formed in the direct aftermath of the 1994 revolt and were active between then and 1997, maintaining their anonymity throughout, and largely distributing their music by copied cassettes.

Revolución Permanente (Permanent Revolution) brings together all of the band’s recorded material – their 1994 self-titled debut, 1995’s Política Y Esparcimiento… (Politics And Entertainment), and 1997’s Canciones Electorales (Electoral Songs), plus a live performance in El Paso in 1996, and a bonus track recorded in 2015, Esto No Es Una Democracia (This Is Not A Democracy).

The album opens with the solemn spoken word of the EZLN’s original declaration of war to sparsely martial percussion, before plunging into a barrage of raw, politically charged hardcore punk, barring a satirical leap into pop punk on I’m Making My Future With The Border Patrol.  It is an intensity perfectly captured by the chaotic live set.  Lyrically, they challenged the state violence endemic to Mexico, its rampant socio-economic inequality, and democratic deficit as well as the malign history of US intervention in Central American politics.

The insert includes a short Spanish essay from the band, placing their original message, and their understanding of what punk is, within the context of a contemporary world defined by surveillance capitalism, growing authoritarianism, and the paramilitary violence of ICE on the streets of the US.

Two of the most spiteful purveyors of contemporary d-beat join forces, contributing seven tracks apiece to this split album, Död Åt Tyranner (Death To Tyrants)

‘Permafrost shall wield, The new breed of terror, Prehistoric nightmare, Shall thrive on human error’ (The Terror Rises From The Grave)

Seattle’s Nighfeeder, who feature members of Consume and Deathraid, have been building a bleakly impressive body of work since their 2021 self-titled debut 7-inch.  Their contribution to this split is as brutal as you would anticipate.  The d-beat fuelled rhythm section injects a distinctive rock’n’roll swagger, but one that is absolutely saturated through with the darkly thrashing crust of the guitar onslaught.

Meanwhile the roared vocals confront a world mired in the degradation of both humanity and animals, together with our shared planet.  My personal highlight amid the carnage is Life’s Foul Pit.  The dissonant opening melody feeds into a truly venomous riff, which is in turn allowed the scope to fully breathe in the stunning groove laden, melody laced climax.

‘Education and healthcare, All up for sale, Keep the stockholders pleased, So that profit prevails’ (End All This Crap)

Verdict’s pedigree is equally impressive, reading as it does as a veritable who’s who of Swedish hardcore from Exploatör to Totalitär.  They take off from exactly where they left on their fiercely intense second full-length, 2023’s The Rat Race.  The emphasis is on blistering velocity and perpetually shifting d-beat rhythms, although the band are not averse to letting their natural sledgehammer groove lock-in amid the squalling solos.

Lyrically, the harshly rasping vocals take aim at the remorseless financialisaton and polarising echo chambers that are tearing apart our social fabric.  It is a potent blend and one that comes together with particular vehemence on the bruising I’m Not Built To Last and the chugging stomp of Narcissistic Piece Of Shit.

‘Upprepade bombregn, I blodiga räder, Systematisk terror, Mot befolkningen I städer’ (Eliminering/Kolonisering) / ‘Repeated bombardments, In bloody rows, Systematic terror, Against the urban population’ (Elimination/Colonization)

Hot on the heels of their split EP with Destruct, Svaveldioxid (Sulphur Dioxide) celebrate their tenth anniversary with a savage sixth album, Misär O.D (Misery O.D).  The Stockholm band continue to hone a thoroughly distinctive onslaught, ferociously melding Sweden’s varying hardcore traditions.  For while their rhythmic dynamics are firmly grounded in the käng idiom, their guitars are notably more indebted to the thick buzzsaw riffage of early 1990’s death metal in the vein of Entombed.

Meanwhile, the echo drenched, semi-shouted Swedish vocals confront the rising tide of authoritarianism and the military violence being inflicted on civilian populations by zealots of every hue.  As it careers from the searing Inre Uppror (Inner Rebellion) to the seething riffage of Religiös Ondska (Religious Evil), not to mention the searing solos that ignite amid the carnage of Eliminering/Kolonisering (Elimination/Colonization) and Mänskliga Facklor (Human Torches), it is a powerfully intense barrage.

‘None stole my heart, But there’s still been a theft, Asked not to jump, But I’ve already leapt’ (In Lieu Of Flowers)

Hailing from Bellingham, Washington, MEM//BRANE were active from 2023-2025 and bow out with their self-titled full-length.  They were fierce advocates of trans rights, and the album provides a harrowing insight into the traumas and insecurity being inflicted on marginalised communities amid the authoritarian turn currently engulfing the US.

MEM//BRANE meld driving d-beat, cymbal awash rhythms with ferocious metallic crust riffage.  They instinctually segue from doom laden reflection to squalling solos through baleful breakdowns.  However, the very heart of their sound lies in the band’s iron grip on their remorseless groove. The unvarnished ferocity of What You Have Smeared On The World, the melancholy braided In Lieu Of Flowers, and the surging fury of (sirens approaching) are personal stand outs amid the unforgiving barrage.

The album’s bark meets roar, death metal inclined vocals delve into the loneliness, abandonment, and depression that can stalk the lives of those struggling to find equilibrium in an unforgiving world, while trenchantly confronting the political opportunists who are currently fuelling social intolerance and violence for their own grasping needs, ‘the thieves of peace’ (The Sheer Veil Of Fascism).

‘Sit in your bed, Pretend you’re on trial, Feel the sting, Of imagined betrayal, Hallucinate the bars, Of the social cage, Wanna be erased?’ (Memory Ward)

Imagine stumbling through a thick, swirling fog, so viscous that it seems to cling to your very skin.  Fleetingly it clears, only for you to be swiftly swallowed by the next swelling bank.  All the while, stinging blows rain down on you incessantly and from the most unexpected of angles.  There is nowhere to hide, no respite to be found.

This is the self-titled debut album from Phoenix’s Memory Ward, and it is a viscerally claustrophobic one.  It is an intrinsically abrasive, densely layered battery, one that continually threatens to overwhelm, while never losing total control of the aural chaos as each track bleeds into the next.  The atmosphere is fraught with unease and anxiety.  You are left reeling as the convulsions violently unfurl from the punishing Drowned Fool to the lacerating Social Order, and the psychedelic tinged grooves of Vivid Blue.

The blown-out distortion can’t hide the nimble angularity of the blisteringly rapid guitars, while the welcome flares of dissonant melody are swiftly smothered by the next wave of discordance.  The rhythm section is utterly frenetic, complex patterns delivered with a primitive abandon.  The caustically raw vocals lock-in with these manic rhythms, drenched in despair as they contemplate the isolation and self-doubt that flourish amid the detritus of an atomising society.  The throbbing atonal feedback that closes the album comes almost as a cleanser, clearing the mind before you plunge back into the tumult.

‘I refuse to fall in line, And live my life submissive and blind, No high king in the clouds for me, Your last day is your reality’ (Last Breath)

Denver’s Negative Degree were initially active in the 2010s, releasing two EPs before going on hiatus in 2017.  Just before they did so, they actually recorded a third EP, and it has now been released as the perfect primer for the band’s return to action.

The four rampaging tracks capture their almost timeless style, one rooted in 1980s USHC, yet also spiced with a more contemporary youth crew sensibility.  The delivery is as high octane as that would imply, with a keen eye for tension ratcheting builds, and brimming with a fiercely urgent intensity.

The impassioned, rasping vocals tackle the oppressive influences of religion and the self-serving political consensus that laid the groundwork for the rise of authoritarian opportunists, as well as the relentless militarisation of the police.  The tautly bristling Last Breath and the barrelling Beat The Crowds land with a particular velocity.

‘We have the will, A battle cry will sound out, Shrill against the night, And with it our retribution, The warren is empty’ (The Fall Of Efrafa)

Fall Of Efrafa were a Brighton based crust band, active between 2005 and 2009.  They formed with the express aim of releasing a trilogy of concept albums – The Warren Of Snares – based around the mythology of Watership Down.  The 1972 Richard Adams novel explores the trials of a group of rabbits whose warren is destroyed, and who find themselves trapped in the police state of Efrafa, under the tyrannical rule of General Woundwort.

The band used this mythology to explore themes of anti-authoritarianism, animal rights, atheism, and the power of community action.  Each of the three albums Owsla, Elil, and then Inlé takes its name from the Lapine language of the novel, and the trilogy is structured in reverse order, with the first album, Owsla, dealing with the climatic rebellion that sees Efrafa fall.

I must admit I rarely need much encouragement to delve into Fall of Efrafa’s discography.  However, the news that Alerta Antifascista are planning to reissue all three albums over the next year, beginning here with Owsla, is as good excuse as any.

Owsla was the band’s debut album and was released in 2006 and represented the first movement in the trilogy.  It opens with the sombre swell of cello and ominously foreboding spoken word, before immersing us into an evocatively conjured world.  Bleakly melodic crust forms the bedrock, soaring melancholy fuelled by waves of darkly metallic riffage, and braided throughout with mournful cello and flourishes of haunting post-metal.  It builds relentlessly towards cathartic peaks, where hopeful defiance succeeds in subverting the atmosphere of dread and fear.

From the raucous climax to Pity The Weak to the brooding escalation of Last But Not Least, it is a powerfully crafted album, reaching its euphoric zenith on The Fall Of Efrafa itself.  Indeed, it would take someone of admirable self-restraint not to find themselves roaring the ‘The warren is empty’ at the album’s rousing finale.  As those words die to a whisper on your lips, it is clear that the stirring impact of Owsla has not dimmed one iota since its release, and the themes that it examines are now more relevant than ever.

‘Nos aplasta ya, nos desplazan ya, Nos arrastran a ese otro lado donde no quieren estar, El futuro es colonizado otra vez’ (El Himno Desentonado De Una Nación Moribunda) / ‘They crush us now, they displace us now, They drag us to that other side where they don’t want to be, The future is colonized again’ (The Dissonant Anthem Of A Dying Nation)

Mexico City’s Soga made quite a stir with their demo back in 2018, which was promptly put to vinyl by Iron Lung.  They are now back, and if you enjoyed that first release, you are going to absolutely love their debut album proper, Corrosión.  The trio deliver hardcore that is fast and intense, yet as you spend time with the album it begins to reveal layers that give an enduring depth beyond the raw immediacy.  And it is those unexpected twists that will keep drawing you back into its impassioned embrace.

At the heart of the band’s sound is their fiercely tight rhythm section, which locks in an unrelenting groove that, in turn, allows the guitar to indulge in its own freewheeling excursions into swaggering, blues fuelled solos.  The bassist and guitarist share vocal duties, and they alternate and overlay their semi-shouted vocals with an invigorating and confrontational dynamism.  The band’s tight grip on these fundamentals then affords them the scope to embrace more unexpected eruptions of late 1970s’ punk uproar and flares of post-punk melancholy with a wonderfully organic ease.

Meanwhile, Soga delve unflinchingly into the issues facing Mexican society from land seizures and gentrification to mass graves and disappearances, all while under the suffocating choke of state and church.  From the blistering opener, Mi Cadáver (My Corpse), it is an exhilarating ride as they sweep through the raucously unhinged El Himno Desentonado De Una Nación Moribunda to the melodically layered N, and then the urgently surging Comer Pavimento (Eat Pavement).

‘Blinded by perceived reflection, Forgetting honest compassion, Estranged by your own mind, Crying wolf, Self victimise, Emptiness reaped, Selfishness sewed’ (Narcissist)

Orc Party is an album that plunges us back to the late 1980s’, when hardcore and crust took thrash metal, and mutated it into something altogether more gnarly and nasty.  Yet this is no mere homage.  The savagery on display speaks to a band who not only love these influences but, featuring as they do current and former members of Firewalker, Scalpel, and Vaxine, have the technical chops to match their passion.

This is the New York band’s follow-up to 2022’s Destabilize and it takes things to a new level of intensity.  The haunting, swirling dungeon synths of Friendship perfectly prime the atmosphere, before we are pitched into the darkly thrashing maelstrom.  Here, growled vocals, blast beat eruptions, squalling solos, bloodcurdling howls, and Mick Harris-style barking yelps are all melded together with an unashamed relish.  It is the riffs though that steal the day.  From the bruising breakdowns that close out Narcissist and Goblin Mode, by way of the venomous grooves that define Time Is Fake and Hope Fucker, they are proper pit provokers.

In another call back, there is also a sense of mischief that runs through the record that provides a counterpoint to its seething misanthropy as it surveys the naked self-interest and delusion that is driving humanity to the brink.  All of which is invoked through the imagery of The Lord Of The Rings, obviously.  And just when you think you have a handle on proceedings, 80HD close out with a thumping industrial dance remix of Goblin Mode.

‘Hope is a weakness, Morbid fascination, Hold on to nothing, It never ends, The crushing weight, Of nothing new, Will you let it, Destroy you?’ (Speck Of Dust)

As the sarcasm saturated title implies, this is not an album that revels in Endless Joy but rather one founded in perpetual despair.  Reuniting three members of early noughties outfit Cold Sweat, who went on to play in Iron Lung and Private Room among others, it is a viscerally bleak record.

The Seattle band forge a brutal blend of blast beat fury, infectious grooves, and sludge-fuelled intensity.  They deftly ratchet the tension, marshalling these elements into a dozen sixty second eruptions, never allowing the barbarous velocity to collapse in on itself.  Indeed, it is those moments when the pace is slowed, and the lumbering menace given full rein, that they are at their most crushing.

Meanwhile, the rasping, semi-shouted vocals revel in a nihilistic contempt for the corroding forces of militarisation and religion within a society locked into a relentlessly downward spiral.  The highlights come thick and fast from the seething Burial Flag and the rhythmic swagger of Fools For Christ, before the positively swinging The Future Is Now and the cathartic finale of Another World.

‘Each morning you kneel, At the altar of fate, Without the company misery generates, Providing you, Their tools to sharpen, Whored out to sow, Their dark garden’ (The Dark Garden)

Los Angeles is a city of erasure, where the myths of economic boosterism have repeatedly sought to reshape it for the benefit of the few.  The result is a city where the scripted and sanitised still seek to block out the communities that form its heart, where a polarising divide between wealth and poverty is still entrenched.  This album is an ode to the strength of those communities to both survive and subvert.  A resolution that is now needed more than ever.

Cemento have been honing their gothic shrouded post-punk on a series of cassette-only releases before this, their debut album.  All of the fundamentals that this would imply – the baritone vocals, the soaring melancholy – are firmly in place.  Yet it is the accents and flourishes that Cemento nurture that imbue Bad Dream Songs with its thoroughly distinctive, darkly entrancing atmosphere.

The vocals that gently lean into their power yielding a drawled yet nuanced cadence.  The rhythm guitars that are taut with fuzzed out discordance.  The bottom end that brings a propulsive, loose-limbed swing.  And the dancing, mournful guitar leads that segue into vibrantly escalating solos draped in their own melancholic majesty.

It proves a powerfully evocative blend.  The shimmering opening to Better Days lures you inexorably into their bleakly euphoric reverie.  It is a grip that never eases from the bleakly contagious Black River to the bass fuelled On The Lord’s Day, and the chiming desolation of the title track.

‘Arrested, investigated, purged…Those who won’t conform must be crushed like insects, The shadow of utopia falls across their concrete cells and gravepits’ (Hidden Ruler [Kang Sheng])

A world sucked into a merciless mire of authoritarian control, state surveillance, militarised violence, and rapacious economic self-interest.  A misery saturated narrative that reeks of the indiscriminate horror that is of our present yet is also somehow both futuristically dystopian and shrouded in the imagery of medieval savagery.  Such an evocative combination can mean only one thing – the return of Portland’s Rigorous Institution.

Tormentor is the follow-up to the band’s searing 2002 debut full-length, Cainsmarsh.  The sonic fulcrum remains stenchcore braided through with a sense of gothic drama and growled vocals that appear to have been steeped in humanity’s degradation for all eternity.  Intriguingly though, Tormentor sees the band succeed in the fine balancing act of both intensifying their neanderthal brutality, while also nurturing their more experimental urges.

The former manifests itself in the utterly crushing riffage.  The uncompromisingly raw crust aesthetic remains undimmed.  However, from the sledgehammer grooves of Hidden Ruler (Kang Sheng) and Passion Play to the venomous riffs that define Regime Forces and Preach To The Converted, the doom-laden riffage is somehow even more muscular in its execution.

The latter is exemplified by the two instrumental tracks that close out each side.  P.B.T.D entwines a lone southern-tinged guitar with bird song, while the finale, H.D. IV – Laika’s Lament, sees haunting electronics ambiently soothe and stab with unease in equal measure.  A bleakly triumphant return.

‘Un niño ve la cruz, En la arena, Flores secas, Madera sin pena, Quien murio aquí? Pregunta al viento’ (Cruces) / ‘A child sees the cross, In the sand, Withered flowers, Wood without sorrow, Who died here? He asks the wind’ (Crosses)

Although now based in Austin, Mujeres Podridas (Rotten Women), who feature members of Wiccans and Nosferatu, were born in the Rio Grande Valley that runs along the southernmost stretch of the Mexico-Texas border.  Sangre Y Sol (Blood And Sun), the band’s second full-length and follow up to 2021’s Muerte En Paraíso (Death In Paradise), continues to be shaped by the violence, poverty, and intolerance that stalk the region.

Yet, while the band’s lyrical concerns are indelibly shaped by this lived experience, their sound is one rooted much more in the traditions of Southern California punk.  Propulsive rhythms and infectious surf-tinged guitars form the tightly crafted bedrock, although laced with a sombre melodicism that belies the album’s darker themes.  These elements are matched with strident Spanish vocals courtesy of Dru Molina (formerly of Criatures and Kurrakä), whose delivery is a touch more restrained than on those earlier projects, which affords space for plenty of catchily melodic hooks.

Kicking off an album with an instrumental always seems a courageous move, but it works perfectly with opener Aqua Peligrosa (Dangerous Water), the brightly freewheeling solos interwoven with samples from the region’s history of state violence and disenfranchisement.  The scene now set, the momentum never sags for even a moment from the serpentine leads of Sol (Sun) to the surging urgency of El Río Grande, and then from the swelling melancholy of Cruces to the more introspective Ovni II (UFO II).

The self-titled debut album from Calgary art-punks Parisian Orgy lands with a healthy dose of weird and wonderful invention together with a keen ear for melodies that you just can’t shake.

Parisian Orgy began life as a solo project in the late 2010s and have since evolved into a five-piece collective.  Their self-titled debut album opens with the discordant Bubbling Boy, followed by a cover of Four Boys by early 1980s’ Parisian new wavers Tokow Boys.  By this point, I already knew not to expect matters to follow anything like a linear path, but that is probably just about all that I did correctly anticipate.

The base elements are pretty consistent – strummed guitars, limber rhythms, skittering synths, jarring toy horns, and xylophones.  However, Parisian Orgy consistently morph and twist them into the most unexpected of shapes, some frenetic, others altogether more languid, while the yelping vocals and their repetitive mantras conjure up tales of the absurd.

The key to the album’s impact is that everything fizzes with an organic, improvisational energy that skips without a care past the forced wilfulness that can sometimes bedevil more experimental projects.   The mouth organ (I think) fuelled languor of Jazz Song For Shrimp, the jauntily escalating Come Pretty Pump Sleep, and the pulsing bass line and soaring ‘la, la, las’ of  Belly Button Trap Door each land with a vibrant fervour.

‘Plastico mi cuerpo, Plastico y metales perados, Mi cuerpo es plastic’ / ‘My body is plastic, plastic and heavy metals, my body is plastic’ (Barbie Terminator)

Abism’s debut album, 2023, was a lesson in the power of doing the basics exceptionally well.  And this EP sees the New York band, who include members of Fairytale and Dawn Of The Humans, continue to place an unwavering emphasis on these core fundamentals.  Scraping, fuzzed guitars and thumping pogo rhythms lock into a relentless groove, while the fiercely rasping Spanish vocals grapple with the horrors inflicted on Gaza, the paramilitary violence of ICE, and a world locked into patterns of entrenched injustice.

Yet, as the 7-inch evolves, Abism begin to flex just a little, without compromising their mesmerising velocity, as flares of fuzzed out, almost seventies’ rock melodicism add an unexpected new dimension to the onslaught. Each of the five tracks slams home with impressive force.  Personal highlights are the melodically scampering leads of Cuantas Niños? (How Man Children?), the blistering riff that propels (Si) No Hay Paz ([Yes] There Is No Peace), and the wigged-out swing of Mentalidad Televisiva (Television Mentality).  Primitive hardcore delivered with no little panache.

‘A different setting, The same scene, Purpose of life, What does it all mean? Nothing, Work, buy, consume, die, A pill a day to conceal the lie’ (Nothing)

Beyond Recognition is the debut six-track 7-inch from Washington DC’s Laughing Corpse, who feature members from Genocide Pact, Glitterer, and Red Death among others.  Yet this roll call is little guide to the darkly dissonant, bleakly nihilistic hardcore that we are treated to here as the desperation drenched vocals wallow in the isolation and defeat of the daily treadmill we allow to ensnare us.

It is also an EP that sees the band become progressively more expansive, not say to say utterly unhinged, as it develops.  Side one kicks off with the rampaging Endless Game and locks into a fiercely surging battery from there, driven by some surprisingly clean, killer bass lines.  With this base established, the flip side becomes altogether more unpredictable as the band sweep from the swirling muscularity of Nothing to the bludgeoning, squalling Chapter 7 with a frenzied abandon.

‘Regress, Stretched thin across a broken frame, Regress, We wager dreams in a rigged game, Is there anything more than just to survive?’ (Progress)

Hailing from Raleigh, North Carolina, and featuring members of Voight Kampf and Skemäta, DE()T return with a 7-inch follow up to their 2024 debut album, Think Of Your Future.  They continue to revel in fashioning disconcertingly jolting, off kilter post-punk.  Shards of guitar are interwoven with spaced out swells of synth, underpinned by chunky bass lines, and burlier than anticipated percussion.

Meanwhile, the laconically drawled vocals hover somewhere between mischievous and disdainful detachment.  They are born of that moment when you realise that your more youthful optimism may have been misplaced and that things don’t necessarily have to get better.  In fact, the converse is often more likely to be true.  These satisfyingly offbeat charms land with particular relish on the infectiously despondent Progress and the assertively pulsing title track.

‘They are the suits and vultures, The ones buying the streets, Leaving people on their own and, Flipping our lives for hotel suites…They build their wealth on despair, While we struggle to just breath the air’ (Housing Game)

Bilbao’s Yunk serve up four tracks that brim with intriguing contradictions, yet they emerge as an intoxicating, cohesive whole.  Fuzzed out shoegaze and a chiming dream pop sensibility are ferociously distilled through a grittily anthemic melodic punk lens to startling effect.  The result is a an almost euphoric reverie that is as grounded as it is dreamy, as combative as it is hopeful.

In a similar vein, the hazily upbeat atmosphere belies rather more sombre lyrical themes.  Rousing calls for housing justice and for collective community action to stymie the rise of the far-right form the bedrock, as well as an ode to the cleansing physicality of pit, while calling out those who choose to abuse it.

And while richly detailed, the immediacy of the tracks is vibrantly striking.  I found myself belting out the soaring choruses to the opening two tracks, Our Way and Leave Me Alone, on my first listen.  But that proved nothing compared the heart swelling peaks of Unity! before the shimmering, melancholy laced closer Housing Game brings proceedings to a stirring climax.  This has rather put a spring in my step and that, if we’re honest, is no bad thing during this rather bleak January.

‘Their riches come from exploitation, Prosperity from international subjugation, Yet their claims to greatness, Are based on a myth of isolation’ (Empire’s Deceit)

The feral, snapping jaws of the cover art are drawn from a graphic novel that charts the story of escaped 19^th century slaves in Brazil.  It vividly primes expectations for this debut 7-inch, both musically and thematically.

Featuring as they do members of both Catharsis and Point Of No Return, it comes as little surprise that North Carolina’s From Below favour darkly atmospheric metallic hardcore.  However, while nods to both can be found, having a solitary vocalist, as opposed to Point Of No Return’s trio, and leaning more into rapid-fire d-beat and 1980s’ USHC rhythms than the more crust inspired influences of Catharsis, ensure that the dynamics of their sound evolve rather differently.

The urgently roared vocals alternate between English and Portuguese as the three tracks examine the rationalities that have justified the use of nuclear weapons (Teratomachia) and the brutal legacies of Portuguese colonialism in Africa and South America (Feitoria / Factory).  My personal highlight is, perhaps, the venomously surging Empire’s Deceit as it pulls together the threads that see overseas imperialism fuel domestic intolerance.

‘Nobody is asking for much, Survival is just an afterthought to those people, It’s mating season for the worst of human kind, I was born right into an ocean full of shit’ (IDGAG)

Gucked Up is the debut album from Guck, an abrasive fusion of electronic punk and noise rock influences.  Darkly pulsing electronics, slabs of discordant riffage, squalling melodies, and industrial inclined rhythms are woven into an unyielding battery that flits seamlessly between the innately danceable and the ineffably heavy.  And while this onslaught restlessly convulses with chaotic impulses, Guck’s compositions retain a clear-eyed coherency – even as each track jerks and contorts, they never lose shape nor momentum amid the dissonant experimentation.

The higher pitched atonality of the harshly nasal vocals provides a perfect counterpoint to the ever present, menacingly pulsating bottom-end.  They mutate from rhythmic tirades to harrowing screams, and from desperation drenched roars to sardonic taunts with a deliciously unhinged vigour.  The lyrics explore themes of socio-economic inequality, the relentless militarisation of society, and climatic breakdown through the lens of living in Los Angeles, a city perpetually mired between mythical imaginaries and much harsher daily realities.

From the ominous swells of the title track opener to the bone shuddering grooves of GUBAR, and from the surging agitations of Blue Collar Crime to the contagiously throbbing dance rhythms of IDGAG , the intensity is utterly unwavering.

‘Your life: traded like currency, Your love: burned up like gasoline, Manufacture need, Expedite receipt, Few can take part in the dream, built with stolen blood’ (Futurerock)

As hardcore punk continues to morph and reformulate itself into new shapes, it can sometimes be easy to forget the importance of base principals.  This is an accusation that could never be levelled at San Diego’s Negative Blast.  Theirs is a sound that positively revels in these essentials – the spit, the snap, the sheer velocity are all apparent in gratifying abundance.

Destroy Myself For Fun! is the band’s second album, following on from their 2023 debut, Echo Planet, and their split EP with Sweat from the same year.  Each of the eight tracks is a tensely coiled eruption.  Full, muscular guitars are underpinned by a propulsively limber rhythm section that imbues proceedings with an unashamed rock’n’roll swagger.  Their grip on the anchoring tenets is formidable and this, in turn, affords them the scope to assuredly flex their more inventive instincts.  From the woozy, sludge fuelled breakdown that defines the bruising Nuwage to the staccato stomp of Denial, by way of the darkly melancholic melody woven through Futurerock, the energy is never less than invigorating.

Meanwhile, the snarled vocals animate the lived experience of immigrant communities, both new and established, in the US in the context of the hostile domestic environment and the volatile cocktail of complicity and adventurism currently shaping the country’s position in the world.  This also inspires a parallel theme of working to maintain personal authenticity, both as an American from the emigrant diaspora, and simply as an individual, in the face of the polarising excesses and ceaseless distractions of surveillance capitalism.

‘Did you wish this for me, A limited square frame, Turned inside, I do what I want, I seek what I have’ (Legacy)

Maraudeur return in typically inventive style with their third album, Flaschenträger (Bottle Carrier), and follow-up to 2021’s Puissance 4 (Power Of 4).  Having previously been based in Geneva and Leipzig, the band are now spread throughout Switzerland, France, and Germany as well as having expanded to a six-piece.

What hasn’t changed though is the band’s relish for playfully detached, resolutely stripped back art-punk.  However, whereas Puissance 4 was primarily built around motorik beats and pulsing bass lines, Flaschenträger offers a somewhat more eclectic palette.  Indeed, the opening side is even more loosely assembled than expected, with tracks such as EC Blah. Blah and La Jaguar revelling in their deconstructed austerity.  Flesh is incrementally draped over these gyrating bones as the album progresses.

The flip side sees the song structures become a little tighter and the guitars a touch more more assertive within the mix.   Similarly, the vocals, alternating between French and English, evolve from off-kilter semi-spoken to more melodically layered expressions as they toy with everything from picnics in sunny car parks and controlling relationships to giant River Rhône catfish as allegory for a world being gaslit as it plunges into the abyss.  This blend lands to particular effect on the tautly restrained Clever Sneaker, the wryly shimmering Syncope, and the haunting unfurling of (Legacy).