‘We’re told the struggle is ours alone, Systemic failures, Sold as personal failure, Isolation, Maintains the system, And if we buy the lies, They become the truth’ (The Lie Becomes The Truth)

The ideas that fuel The Truth Of Impermanence act as a powerful antidote to that most powerful of untruths – that there is no alternative, the now is eternal.  Political hegemony relies on removing people’s hope.  Killing at birth the very notion that anything better is possible.  And at times like this, when the direction of travel feels bleakly inevitable, when coherent opposition feels suffocated, that hope is the very kernel of resistance.

Hailing from New York, REDS were initially active in the mid-noughties, releasing their debut album Is: Mean, before heading in their separation directions.  Reforming in 2023, and with a revamped rhythm section, The Truth Of Impermanence was born.  The band continue to hone tautly clean, high energy emotional hardcore, but it is equally clear that it is fired by vehemently renewed conviction.

As they sweep from the searing opener, The Lie Becomes The Truth, to the ferociously catchy closer, The Body, by way of the venomous oscillations of Wounds and dissonant slow burn build of Slow Decay, the intensity is deftly layered.  It evokes a sense of the chaos tinged tension of Hot Cross fusing with the reflective expressions of Fugazi, before being distilled down to its very essence.

The vocal performance, equal parts raw velocity and richly emotional detailing, is the perfect counterpoint.  It builds powerful connections between systematic misinformation, dehumanising narratives, and bodily autonomy as well as the power of DIY hardcore to forge much needed community in the face of such adversity.

‘Battling giants and talking shit, To watch the sun come up, It lives somewhere, Like a bag of fun dip, to be harvested when necessary’ (Warriors)

Harrowgate is an album about grief. An emotion that even once experienced is almost impossible to describe.  A pain beyond words that time does not heal. It may mute the rawest edges, but the shadow of loss still stalks us, ready to pounce at the most unexpected of provocations.  Yet those same memories can also serve as a positive force – one of both remembrance and inspiration, one that roots us and helps propels us forward.

Disappearances largely comprise members of two fine Philadelphia bands from the mid-noughties, Dying and Less Life (their 2013 split album was an absolute corker).  This pedigree shines through in abundance on this, their debut album, although intriguingly they actually recorded their first demo together nearly a decade ago.

This is darkly metallic, crust leaning hardcore that blends furious blast beat eruptions with slabs of menacing groove and lacerating squalls of mournfully dissonant melody.  Meanwhile, the harrowing, desperation fuelled roared vocals unpick the consequences of grief in its myriad of forms – the death of loved ones, the fracturing of community, the loss of place, and the aftermath of trauma.

The tautly constructed highlights slam home with impressive regularity.  The bruising climatic breakdown to Collapse.  The jagged, convulsing melancholy of Vulnerability Hangover.  The bleakly contagious Shame Trailer.  The bone shuddering bass lines of White Phosphorous.  What emerges is an emotionally uncompromising yet undeniably rewarding statement.

‘Collective unreason, Now is the season, Our eyes are swelled shut, With our mouths opened up, We are toxic, infected, Immorally subjected’ (Am I Seeing This Clearly?)

Kirkby Kiss are firmly rooted in the traditions of mid-1990s’ metallic hardcore – menacingly discordant guitar, harshly roared vocals, ominous spoken word.  The band’s marshalling of these elements is ever more assured on this, their second album, Four Color Black, and follow up to 2022’s debut, It’s Gonna Cost You.  The ensuing fluidity enables the New Jersey band to conjure a fierce balance between complexity and immediacy, ratcheting tension and brutal realisation.

And while call backs to the pioneers of the sound are to be found – flashes of Deadguy, whispers of Botch – what emerges is a thoroughly distinctive take.  The equal billing afforded to the rhythm section ensures an unexpected sense of space and a notably limber swagger to proceedings, while the dissonant flares of sombre melody inject an unwavering emotional intensity. This intensity is further reflected in a lyrical exploration of the vulnerabilities that collectively connect us in a world ever more predicated on individual self-interest.

From the cathartic tension of You And Me to the infectiously bruising title track, by way of the savage oscillations and squalling violin of Come Out And Play, the onslaught is as remorseless as it is vividly detailed.  Am I Seeing This Clearly?, a collaboration with Jeff Janiak and JP Parsons of False Fed, provides a suitably stirring climax, before a hidden cover of Born Again’s Well Fed Fuck erupts into belated life.

This split 12-inch from Spares and Treasure Pains sees both bands draw on shared inspirations, before taking their emotionally charged post-hardcore in distinctive directions.

‘A change is gonna come, That’s what they all say, White light’ll burst on through, On the darkest day, Don’t think I believe it’ (New Indignities)

Hailing from Portland, Spares released their self-titled debut 12-inch in early 2025 and closed the year with this split.  On these two tracks, the band continue to draw on influences from 1990s’ San Diego post-hardcore that they imbue with their own darkly reflective atmosphere as the deeply clean sung vocals contemplate the weight of a world designed to stifle hope and smother decency.  The broodingly expansive Joke fuses chiming motif melodies with a lurking muscularity and limber rhythms to build to its euphorically layered climax, while New Indignities shapes those same elements into an altogether more urgent expression.

‘Who broke my energy? Who shook the way I live? Took my autonomy, Got nothing left to give’ (Left To Give)

The same angst at this stripping of our humanity similarly fuels the two contributions from Treasure Pains on this, their debut release.  While they call upon elements of the same shared San Diego angularity, the North Carolina band favour a more agitated, tightly crafted interpretation.  Both Left To Give and Strike are high octane eruptions that bristle with a desperate frustration yet also, in equal measure, an undeniably infectious melodic melancholy.  It would take a particularly deadened heart to not join in the rousing ‘Ooh’ fuelled finale to Strike.

‘From the master’s deft hand, We are fed horrid remains, In the master’s tight grip, We will remain’ (Reaper)

Roanoke, Virginia’s Ex Parents are back with a new four-track EP, Failure, following on from their 2023 self-titled debut album.  The trio’s sound is one grounded in the very fundamentals of 1980s’ USHC.  And such is their rigorously tight grip on these base elements of blistering speed and raw aggression that it affords them the scope to lean into some intriguingly layered flourishes.  Meanwhile, the rasping vocals explore the damaging learned behaviours that feed our own complicity in an economic system designed to divide and atomise.

The title track kicks off proceedings in rampaging style, before Reaper fuses a martial anarcho-punk stomp with a burly group vocal finale.  The rather more loose limbed When The Hook Sets is then laced with an almost fuzzed out melodicism, before the closer Dimwit bristles with a lean garage punk intensity.  Proof, if it were needed, that no nonsense does not mean no invention.

‘El deseo banal del progreso, glorifica la tecnologia como dios, perseverente camino para erigir un inevitable, inevitable undo infértil’ (Progreso Reccionario) / ‘The banal desire for progress glorifies technology as a god, a persistent path to erecting an inevitable, inevitable barren world’ (Reactionary Progress)

The bold artwork to Choque Asimétrico (Asymmetric Shock) incisively primes expectations.  A security wall morphs into stomping paramilitaries as the brutal learnings from wars of occupation boomerang home to militarise civic life.   They march past emaciated, faceless figures cowering in the aftermath of their overseas violence and in the shadow of the wall itself.  Beyond this wall, the architecture of security and capital soars through the polluted skies.  A world reborn as prison, a fortress to sow fear, and to harvest profit.

Bogotá’s Unidad Ideológica (Ideological Unity) return with their second album, and follow-up to 2021’s self-titled debut.  Featuring as they do members of Alambrada and Muro, the sheer unbridled venom of their metallic d-beat onslaught comes as little surprise.  This pedigree also ensures that, amid the unyielding velocity, their raw barrage is a deftly dynamic and astutely layered one.

From the surging groove of Huir (Flee) to the thrashing barbarity of Colapso Esotérico (Esoteric Collapse), and from the discordantly squalling melodicism of Posthumanista (Posthumanist) to the urgent rhythmic fury of the closer Prisión [Sur] Global (Prison [South] Global), the intensity is as unforgiving as it is vividly detailed.  Meanwhile, the desperation-soaked vocals pay witness to the relentless quelling of the human spirit at the hands of surveillance capitalism, techno-feudalism, and the remorseless exploitation of the marginalised.

‘We slouch on our thrones, etched in stone, Last breaths screaming, A nocturne of apathy’ (The Emptiness Of All Things)

‘It is about not giving up the ghost – and this can sometimes amount to the same thing – the refusal of the ghost to give up on us’ (Mark Fisher, Ghosts Of My Life).  The concept of hauntology has long informed the music of Massa Nera (Black Mass) – the refusal to settle for the financialised hegemony of our times, not to take refuge in the melancholy of nostalgia, but rather to animate the understanding that alternative futures can be born.

It is once again a powerful presence in shaping The Emptiness Of All Things, one that examines the neoliberal ‘common sense’ that locks us into a cycle of growing inequality, entrenched militarisation, climatic breakdown, and technological delusion.  Indeed, the title itself is an allusion to the fact that what seems eternal is, in fact, contingent on our collective acceptance.

The Emptiness Of All Things is the New Jersey band’s third full-length and follow-up to last year’s split album with Quiet Fear, Quatro Vientos // Cincos Soles (Four Winds, Five Suns). At the heart of their searingly intense emotional hardcore is an exploration of the tensions between discordant fury and dissonant reflection, barely restrained chaos and rigorous atmospheric restraint, and the textures that bridge these competing dynamics.

And from the savagely percussive opening of A Body, this tension produces a truly visceral onslaught that roils restlessly, and rarely as anticipated, between harsh aggression and haunting melody.  The frantic incantation of ‘I’ll save us’ during Pèlerin (Pilgrim).  The fiercely rhythmic escalation of Mechanical Sunrise.  The bleakly pulsing industrial climax to Lavender.  The spectral meditation of the closing New Animism.  Massa Nera have harnessed their sonic experimentation, narrative exposition, and no little black humour (‘We’ll cruise the streets in electric cars, with the wind in our hair’ [Mechanical Sunrise]), to deliver an album of strikingly realised ambition.

‘Kneeling on the pavement, Years can run around us while we sink or swim, A nervous declaration, A flower for the ages, Waiting to be picked’ (Glass Bells)

Never Paradise is the debut album from Philadelphia’s Annie Achron.  Calling upon the base elements of early 1980s’ dark wave, she realises a deft melding of warmly pulsating synths, crisply looping percussion, and ethereal vocals.

This is not an album of grand statements and attention seeking flamboyance.  Rather it is propelled by a clear sense of space and gentle, subtle shifts in tone.  The stark palette elicits a strangely comforting reverie, intriguingly one that is decidedly more human than electronic in texture.  It bewitchingly swirls around you like a delicate mist, luring you ever more deeply into its embrace, both playful yet fundamentally austere.

The enigmatically intoned vocals lead roughly half the tracks, with the jauntily angular title track and the haunting chants of the darkly throbbing O. Magnus proving particular highlights.  Yet, the instrumental tracks inspire equally rich interest, not least D’en Robador (Of A Thief) and Out Of The Myst, which are both enticingly primed by sinuous swells of electronic piano.  Never Paradise proves a thoroughly evocative journey.

‘The ceiling is peeling, Is peeling, And we’re both disappearing, Paint chips in my hair like, Fallen Stars, fallen stars’ (Paints Peeling)

Distortion is something beautiful.  That said, one of the undoubted pleasures derived from those bands that chose to shed its delights, is that the vivid integrity of every moving part of their sound that is revealed by its absence.  The bristling, no wave accented punk of Philadelphia’s Eraser on their debut album, Hideout, is a perfect example.

Precise motorik beats and thrumming bass lines form the backbone, while jagged shards of guitar and tantalisingly just short of jarring synths seem unsure of whether to wrestle or collaborate with one another.  What emerges is both anxiously claustrophobic and abrasively confrontational, yet also imbued with a tautly coiled, ineffably danceable energy that draws on the same spikily synth fuelled fervour as Es and Hekátē.

The emotionally cold, disdainfully detached vocals provide an engagingly insidious counterpoint as they sharply deconstruct everything from social platitudes to predatory behaviours and the horrors of Gaza.  The agitated oscillations of Paints Peeling and the deliciously unhinged Dinner Roll are my personal highlights.

‘Kingdom built where nothing grows, Blade rusts as I’m filled with shame, The mirror won’t speak, But knows my name’ (Silk & Sodom)

As well as the usual South London avian stalwarts of swaggering crows and sharp-eyed magpies, we’re blessed in our patch with a totally mental flock of parakeets – their raucously endless chatter brightens even the drabbest of the days.  So, as short hand renderings for our impending doom go, A Garden Without Birds pretty much nails it for me.

This is Ruined Virtue’s debut 7-inch and these four tracks follow up their self-titled demo from last year.  The Sheffield band continue to hone a sound drawing inspiration from late 1980s’ UK metallic crust punk, before injecting a rhythmic fury akin to more contemporary New York influences, in the vein of say Warthog, and then leavening the grit and the grime with soaring flares of NWOBHM accented melody.

Meanwhile, the filthily roared vocals conjure a bleakly allegorical depiction rooted in images of flesh and decay, bone and soil to evoke the economic system that is remorselessly cannibalising both people and planet for the benefit of the gilded few.  And from the barrelling brawn of Long Pig to the choppy grooves of Ghoul 96, and then from the crushing martial breakdown that closes Silk & Sodom to the bristling fury of the title track, the desperation of our baleful future is mercilessly laid bare.

‘Han trazado para mí un destino de violencia y yo lo seguí sin resistencia. De quién es la culpa? Y quién dio la orden?’ (Quién Dio La Orden?) / ‘They have charted a course of violence for me, and I followed it without resistance. Whose fault is it? And who gave the order?’ (Who Gave The Order?)

Welcome to Operación Masacre, the debut album from Ayucaba, a band name derived from the Saint Death of Argentinian folklore.  Barcelona based, the band is drawn largely from the Latin American diaspora, including members of Muro and Inyeccion.  Now, if I’m honest, when I see the term punk-metal it tends to put me a little on guard.  Too often, it seems to be applied to projects that fail to sufficiently capture the specific strengths of either.  Those fears dissipate immediately, however, as Ayucaba tear into the blistering opening track, Sistema Siniestro (Sinister System).

Surging guitars with a viciously vibrant tone, a ferociously propulsive rhythm section, soaringly melodic Maideneque solos, and vocals that seethe from the demonically enraged to the ominously whispered, are marshalled to venomous effect.  And this deft blending of hardcore and metallic inspirations continues to shape the rest of the album with equal ferocity.  There is a complexity to the song structures and a drama to the execution that speaks to the latter, but never at the expense of the energy and velocity of the former.  The vocals similarly meld these competing influences – harshly hoarse yet still intensely expressive.

The finishing touch lies in the baleful atmosphere that infuses Operación Masacre and is embodied by the foreboding of the instrumental title track itself.  This bleakness reflects the lyrical focus on the slow violence endured by emigrant and working-class communities, one that wreaks a terrible toll in terms of broken bodies and minds.  And as they sweep from Sistema Siniestro to the bombastic fury of País Aniquilador (Annilihating Country), the scorching oscillations of Cocaina (Cocaine), and the forlorn melodicism of Distancia (Distance), anger and ambition prove deeply productive bedfellows.

‘Cuando arden mis venas, con el fuego lento, que esconde mis penas, La vida sonríe por el precipicio, me acerco al final y vuelvo a caer, en un mundo gris’ (Mi Mundo Gris) / ‘When my veins burn, with the slow fire, that hides my sorrows, Life smiles over the precipice, I approach the end and fall again, in a grey world’ (My Grey World)

Imagen Latente (Latent Image) is the debut 12-inch from Granada trio, Error De Paralaje (Parallax Error).  Across the six tracks, shimmering guitar, darkly resonant bass lines, and economically elegant percussion are fused into a quietly introspective, intrinsically sorrowful tableau.  It is one where the angular melancholy of post-punk glistens with a bright power pop inclined sheen.

As both the band name and title imply, this is an exploration of the distortions of loss and the tricks of memory.  The gently melodic Spanish vocals, courtesy of drummer Violeta (who also fronts E.V.A.), tease out how recollections fade and reconfigure, always shifting, while the ache of grief remains ever present, muted but never entirely subsiding.  The mournful propulsion of Polvo (Dust) and the languidly layered Qué Será, Será (What Will Be, Will Be) capture the atmosphere of hushed desperation with a suitably understated grace.

‘Some people feel the rain, Other people just get wet, Some people feel the pain, Others haven’t yet, Choreography of absence, Over caffeinated hearts’ (Hope)

Nice Breeze have been honing their songwriting as a unit for the past decade.  Initial plans for their debut vinyl release on Siltbreeze stalled amid the chaos of the pandemic, but have thankfully now been resurrected.  Earlier would have been nice, of course, yet it’s hard to argue that the wait hasn’t very much been worth it.

The Washington DC trio explore the rarely visited edgelands where post-punk, power pop, and alt-folk intertwine, coalescing around a shared off-kilter melodicism.  And yet, never too far from the surface, there is also a distinct abrasiveness that primes a more experimental dynamic.  Fuzzed out guitars that flirt with a blown out scuzziness and flares of atonal electronics provoke intriguingly unexpected shifts in emphasis.  Meanwhile, the often semi-spoken vocals are immersed in a drawled nonchalance as they wryly contemplate our fast unravelling world.

As the agitated title track seeps into the laconic Now What, you sense that the journey will be anything but linear.  And it is one alive with a quietly understated catchiness from the bright jangle of The Power Pop Song to the delicately layered Hope, by way of the bristling Diplomatic Immunity.  And it shouldn’t really come as a surprise when the final track, PS Brix!, suddenly morphs into an expansive, drone fuelled climax.

‘Your stove boiling over, Your stove has gone cold, Where have all the plates gone, Our dinner sitting old, Have they all heard of refrigerator’s gold’ (Refrigerator’s Gold)

Puppet Wipes return with their second album and follow-up to 2022’s The Stones Are Watching And They Can Be A Handful.  The scrappy, lo-fi aesthetic that defined their debut is still firmly in evidence on Live Inside, but with the band having expanded to a trio, their melding of punk experimentalism and enticing pop sensibility now feels a little more fully fleshed out.

The roots of all three members can be traced back to the more offbeat reaches of DIY punk, including Lumpy Records alumni Glitter and Janitor Scum.  Puppet Wipes take this same aesthetic and then ferment it in a vat of demented invention.  Scratchy guitars, discordant electronics, and ragged percussion restlessly morph into new shapes, some barely formed, others vividly alive.  This restiveness is more than matched by the shapeshifting vocals as they fluidly segue from beguiling melodies to disquieting murmurs and dread inducing lullabies in a haze of fractured absurdities.

What emerges is as intoxicating as it is unsettling.  And the highlights come thick and fast – from the unhinged Holding Ceremony Over His Wife’s Corpse to the melancholy shrouded, rather beautiful Refrigerator’s Gold, and then from the jauntily contagious The Una Bomber Used To Come And Dance At Events to the gothic charged Rounds And Rounds.  It is a richly dark delight.  There is even a languorous cover of Do You Wanna Touch My Safety Pin?, the B-side to the sole release from 1977 UK punks, Septimus.

‘Broken out, shackled down, not yet free, Start again, helpless flail, wake up dead, a good run of bad luck ends, It’s out of hand’ (Count Your Days)

Let’s face it, when you see a band is called Tormented Imp you have an inkling of what might ensue.  And to be sure, you would be half right.  The Leeds band do indeed draw a healthy inspiration from Poison Idea and it is one that this debut 7-inch undoubtedly does savage justice to.  The waves of filthy riffage and burly rhythms forge an uncompromising barrage, while the coarsely gruff vocals are saturated in nihilistic fury at a society wilfully devouring itself.

And yet early in the opening track, Punishment, there is a fleeting shard of NWOBHM inspired melody that hints that there is also another dynamic at play.  It soon becomes clear as dramatically melodic solos are unleashed with a savage glee that the bludgeoning onslaught is equally animated by a love of Japanese Burning Spirits hardcore.  Each of the four tracks slam home with a vicious intent with, perhaps, the intertwining of bruising breakdowns and searing solos on Count Your Days and Out To Dry proving my personal highlights.

‘No, it doesn’t have to be like this, You know there’s another way, There has gotta be more to life, Than just making it through the day’ (Another Way)

From the Hillsborough Tragedy to the Grenfell Fire, the attitude of the British state to its people has been laid bare.  Negligence and systemic disdain for working class communities sowed the seeds for the original disasters, while blatant lies, disinformation, and institutional obstruction defined the subsequent responses.  In neither instance has justice been done, the legal system protecting those same interests that empower it.

Challenging this barely concealed contempt is what fuels the debut album from The Social.  All For One, One For All is hardcore punk stripped to its inner essence – the conviction is clear, the anger searingly raw.  The Liverpool trio, who include Tom Pimlott of The Flex and Violent Reaction on vocals / guitar, harness these primal instincts to unleash an uncompromising onslaught.

The muscular riffage and pounding martial rhythms set the groundwork, the quicksilver solos and boisterous sing-along choruses inject a contagious vigour.  As they sweep from the bruising On The Grift and the savage takedown of The Sun newspaper, The Scum, to the uproarious Another Way and the seething The Company, this barrelling intensity doesn’t diminish for one moment.

Meanwhile, the guttural vocals build connections between our divisive economic system, the political grifters seeking to exploit the resultant disaffection by scapegoating the marginalised, colonial legacies, and the need for communities to organise to reshape their own futures.  And amid the confrontational barrage, there is also a welcome lacing of black humour including an ode to Everton’s infamous Dogs Of War midfield from the mid-1990s.

‘Just make an impact, Don’t freeze – react, Avoid the trap of indifference, Choose the path of defiance’ (Impact)

Some albums work their magic slowly, revealing their secrets over time, insidiously working their way under the skin almost unnoticed.  Others forgo such extended preliminaries and simply grab you by the throat from the first spin.  The debut album, Peace Is A Lie, from Flux definitely falls into the latter category.

The Antwerp band deal in fist pumping, UK82 inspired hardcore.  The base elements will be familiar from the abrasive guitars and flaring hints of melody to the primitive drums, yet such is the passion of the delivery that they slam home with a raw, refreshing intensity.  The hoarsely nasal vocals lock in with a fierce synchronicity as the straight to the point lyrics rage against a society increasingly mired in surveillance, intolerance, and militarised control, while also revelling in the pleasures of a swirling, sweaty pit.

The songwriting itself is, arguably, where Flux’s ultimate strength lies – economic, free from self-indulgence, and with an unerring sense of how to maximise the impact.  The rhythmic fury of Flux Your Head, the melodic breakdown in Punk Retaliation, and the rousing finale of War Cry will all have you returning to the well for more.  Simple pleasures done really rather well.

‘Tourne en rond, On s’isole, Vieilles pulsions qui résonnent, Répulsion, Je m’empoissonne’ / ‘Going in circles, Isolating myself, Old impulses echoing, Repulsion, I’m poisoning myself’ (Gare Du Nord)

Gare Du Nord is a project conceived during the Direct Threat 2024 European tour with Instructor.  Members of both bands were keen to engage with the legacies of the 1980s French Oi bands who had been so influential to their respective musical evolutions.  Now, I must admit that I am not best placed to comment on whether this collaborative reimagining is a strictly accurate one.  What I can tell you is that Appels De Phares (Flashing Headlights) has emerged as something of a quietly unassuming treat.

The songwriting builds a tight momentum across the four tracks, while the playing itself has an engaging looseness to it.  The production imbues proceedings with a similarly enticing lo-fi, analogue warmth.  The bass tone punches through with an especially vibrant clarity.  Meanwhile, as the EP sweeps from the darkly catchy Vrille (Drill) to the melodic regret of Dans Le Tunnel (In The Tunnel), the gruff French vocals trace the blurred outlines and anxious memories of a Paris night that has rather gone off the rails.

‘Broken homes and broken bones, We reap the poison that they have sown, A generation expected to fail, When you only have a hammer, All you see is nails’ (Spirit Of Youth)

Hailing from Pittsburgh, No Time released their debut album, You’ll Get Yours, back in 2016.  They returned to the fray after something of a hiatus with their 2023 follow-up, Suffer No Fool, and now this new EP, Comply Or Die.  Intriguingly, they are band whose members have a rich history at the heavier end of hardcore including Concealed Blade, Heartless, Loose Nukes, and Masakari.  And while this pedigree ensures a welcome vehemency to the delivery, No Time is a rather different project.

An intro from The Chisel’s Cal Graham primes the scene before No Time unleash four tracks of high octane, Oi-fuelled melodic punk that brims with a rock’n’roll swagger and a catchily melodic pop sensibility.  The brightly sharp guitars contrast with the altogether burlier vocals as they explore police violence and a world that continues to do all it can to rob the young of any hope for change.  Iron Breed and State Execution get things off to a raucous start, but my personal highlights are, perhaps, the rollicking, piano fuelled title track with and the anthemic slow burn of Spirit Of Youth.

‘Everything I can do, But I don’t know what to do, And I’m the best that I try to be, But it doesn’t make sense to me’ (Boots On Your Back)

Smashing Time began life as something of a transatlantic collaboration but the band has since coalesced around its New York arm.  That said the distinctively English cadence of the vocals, courtesy of former Antagonizm front Oli, ensures that the original spirit of co-operation remains very much alive.

Brand Spanking New is the band’s debut 10-inch and it’s five tracks are immersed in the traditions of 1980s’ UK street punk given a reinvigorating refresh.  The fuzzily distorted guitar and flares of brightly gleaming melody are underpinned by a rhythm section that injects a satisfying swing to proceedings.

The three barrelling side A tracks brim with a raucous energy as they take in themes of the collective ties that help us survive the daily struggle (Battlefield, Mental Oppression) and the failure of the US government to confront the causes of the seemingly never-ending epidemic of mass shootings (Urban Terrorist).

The EP becomes more melodically expansive on the flip side, most notably on the stand-out track, the visceral Paki Scum.  Here Smashing Time rather disconcertingly soundtrack Oli’s rage at the bigotry that he and his family had to endure with a track of fiercely infectious catchiness, before closing on the woozily reflective Boots On Your Back.

‘Los demonios del pasado, Me atormentan, Con remordimiento, Es borrosa la manera, Cuando trato, De crear momentos, Se disipan en al limbo’ (Fragmentos) / ‘The demons of the past, They torment me, With remorse, The way is blurred, When I try, To create moments, They dissipate into limbo’ (Fragments)

Venenö (Poison) return with a follow up to last year’s Demo MMXXIV debut 7-inch. The trio have their roots firmly in New York’s Oi traditions and this heritage, not least the roughly hewn Spanish vocals, is subtly braided through these four tracks.  Yet, Venenö’s sound is one much more notably shrouded in the bleakly melancholic shades of post-punk.

Venenö deftly meld these competing influences.  Waves of mournfully serpentine melody, chunky bass lines, and surging rhythms ferment an atmosphere that is steeped equally in regret at wrong turns taken and an undimmed defiance to get back up for the next round.  The darkly propulsive Vició (Vice) and the bristling anguish of Fragmentos capture the mood with a particular elegiac lucidity.

‘Colonize the promised land just to exploit it all again, Expiration of us all, Infrastructures collapse and fall, Awaken celestial bodies, It’s a planned obsolescence, Fetish of commodity, We’re all just orbital debris terraforming galaxies for the gods of industry’ (Prison Planet BIOS-4)

Phase IV sees the rampaging return of Wiccans.  It tells the story of a world where people are mere units of productivity.  Where technology is used to surveil and polarise those same people.  Where morally and intellectually bankrupt notions of austerity and trickle-down economics are the unchanging rationality.  Where a planet is subject to extraction so rapacious that it is hurtling towards catastrophe.

This is the Texan band’s first album since 2017’s Sailing A Crazy Ship.  Ever since they released their first demo back in 2009, they have been forging their own very singular, restlessly writhing path.  All the core essentials of a fine hardcore record are evident in abundance, yet each is given its own intriguing accent, and the deftness of the songwriting dictates that rarely are they deployed quite when and how you might expect.

The clean toned guitars are tensely abrasive yet underpinned with a gratifying, almost metallic muscularity.  The rhythm section segues from the loosely limber to the frenetically vehement with seamless ease.  The solos recklessly squall into life yet evolve into catchily melodic exhortations.  The gruffly barked vocals provide a binding constant as they contemplate our increasingly dystopian future.  The highlights slam home with impressive regularity.  From the absolutely savage riff that defines the latter half of Crucifixion to the stomping rhythms of Primordial Sorcery, and from the infectiously forlorn motif melody of Prison Planet BIOS-4 to the freakishly unhinged In Pandemonium, this is a blistering return.

‘Nós queremos o novo, mas cercaram um muro, pelas angũstias do pov0, A onde foi meu futuro?’ (Lindas E Findas) / ‘We want something new, But they’ve built a wall around us, Because of the people’s anguish, Where has my future gone?’ (Beautiful And Finished)

This is an album about uncertainty.  The uncertainty of trying to build a life in a new country.  About insecurity.  The insecurity of finding somewhere to call home in a city that increasingly doesn’t recognise that fundamental right.  About disdain.  The disdain of a country that is built on the labour of those it views of as expendable.  About distance.  The distance from family and friends that seemingly grows longer by the day.  Yet, it is also an album about love.  The new loves, the new friendships that form and give meaning to this struggle, and steel you as you build a new life.

Fantasma (Ghost) were first formed by two friends who emigrated from Brazil to live in New York, and have now expanded to a five piece, with members of Dollhouse and Stigmatism swelling the ranks.  Their debut album, Quase (Almost), though remains very much rooted in the lived experiences that first inspired the band’s music.  Drawing with equal relish on both Latin American post-punk and 1980s’ UK anarcho traditions, it is bound by the conventions of neither.

Languidly swirling guitars, a fluidly supple rhythm section, and drawled semi-spoken Portuguese vocals from the groundwork as the album opens with the hazily brooding Me Dá Seu Trabalho (Give Me Your Work) and the insidiously catchy Onde Eu Estou? (Where Am I?).  These same guitars then spark into taut angularity on Eu Quero Você (I Want You) and Eu Nāo Sei (I Don’t Know), before sliding back into languorously melodic reflection on Lindas E Findas.  It is a blend that evokes a sense of blurred disorientation and of futures dissolving, yet also conjures fleeting glimpses of quiet hope, of progress tentatively being made.

‘Another lesson in impermanence, In the lattice of coincidence, The same actions are repeated, Like we haven’t learned anything’ (Secondhand Future)

We live in a world that seeks to desensitise us to the horrors committed in our name, or at least to the complicity of our governments.  That seeks to ensure that we are so focused on insulating ourselves from the insecurities that permeate our lives that we dehumanise those trapped at the margins.  And all so wealth can be disproportionately accumulated at the expense of the common good. Industry’s self-titled second album confronts this cycle of self-harm and exploitation with a fierce clarity.

Last year’s debut full-length was a stirring invocation of the classic elements of anarcho-punk, that this follow-up ramps up to the next level.  The metallic-tinged guitars unfurl with a darkly brooding menace.  The flaring melodies are saturated in elegiac fury.  The martial rhythms snap with a renewed spite.  The impassioned vocals morph from raw semi-shouts to venomous rat-a-tat denunciations as they explore, through an anarchist framing, a world shape by militarised violence overseas and the slow violence of austerity economics and mass incarceration at home.

The resultant onslaught is pared down to its essentials, the tightly disciplined palette ensuring that the Berlin band’s delivery is resolutely uncompromising in its intensity.  Disconsolate desolation and a bristling, combative hope for a better future intertwine throughout as Industry sweep from the sombre melodic flourishes of Manipulated Reality to the visceral agitations of War On The Poor, and the furiously insistent climax of Western Dystopia.

‘Hoard it all, grow their fortune, Belly full, still they want more, Forgetting what you’re living for, Take it all, that’s what they do, Fat cats, they take it all’ (Fat Cat)

Hailing from Brighton, Plastics released their first 7-inch, Plastic World, on Crew Cuts back in 2020 and they now return with their debut full-length.  The core fundamentals of their high octane, thrashing hardcore punk remain firmly in evidence, but as you might anticipate, the assurance and intensity of the delivery have taken a notable step forward.

Flesh Circuit sees Plastics explore an intriguing blend of influences.  The chunky bass lines and crisply punch drums inject a tight hardcore bounce to proceedings.  Meanwhile, the guitars draw their inspiration from the crunching riffage of late 1980s’ thrash metal.  Yet, there is a twist here as the guitar tone is a touch less metallic than you might expect, imbued as it is with a distinctive spaced-out fuzz.   The result is a sound that morphs between pogo punk and crossover thrash with a surprising dexterity.

The sharply energetic vocals prove adept at bridging these shifting dynamics as they map out the everyday struggle to break the constraints of stagnating relationships and a rigged economic system.  Delivered in a higher-than-average register, they lock in with a rhythmic spring in the vein of, say, Sad Boys or Exit Order, but are not shy of strutting a certain NWOBHM-inclined sense of drama when the occasion demands.  Personal stand outs are the frenetically escalating Fat Cat, the agitated stomp of Rat King, and the galloping ferocity of Swing It.