‘They say the sky is the limit, Take a running start before you leap, It’s their world, we live in it, Spread your wings with chains clamped to your feet, It’s the way it is, until the day you die’ (Kiss The Sky)

As you survey the rather bleak state of the world, hope can seem like a luxury that we can ill-afford.  Yet, it is essential to ensuring that our values are not subsumed amid the waves of socio-economic atomisation and the self-serving antics of political grifters.  Hope is the spark that ensures that resistance can ignite.

And the importance of recognising this dynamic is at the very heart of Home Front’s third album, and follow-up to 2021’s Think Of The Lie and 2023’s Games Of Power. The Edmonton band have always been musical magpies of rare invention.  The duo, who expand to an uproarious full band in the live setting, continue to meld the combative energy of the hardcore with the dark melodicism of post-punk and the sheer danceability of synth-pop with an uplifting abandon.

Amid the warmly pulsing synths, glistening shards of guitar, crisp percussion, and even rollicking piano, flares of Echo And The Bunnymen and The Eurythmics via New Order are imbued with a forceful punk velocity.  And Watch It Die finds Home Front in their most assured form yet, marshalling these influences with an ever more deftly organic touch.  They sweep from the anthemic drama of the title track to the raucous Oi!-fuelled For The Children (Fuck All), and then from the insidiously catchy Kiss The Sky to the bristling dark wave of Young Offender, with an exuberant yet seamless relish.

The theme of hope that permeates the album though should not be misconstrued for blind optimism.  Home Front are very clear eyed about the world that confronts us, one rooted in military violence, the myth of meritocracy, and the criminalisation of poverty.  But, it does recognise that the antidote can only be found in ourselves through the bonds of collective action, community, and friendship: ‘Never think that you need to be alone’ (Light Sleeper).  The glimmering shoegaze of closer Empire leaves us with the thought that even the most entrenched system ultimately devours itself, but someone does need to be around to deliver the toppling touch.

‘That’s how we found each other, To remember what we have lost, To contemplate the remains, A sky filled with stars, Scattered ashes encircling ruins from other times, Scavengers fly over decaying bodies’ (ماذا تبقّى / Remains)

À Qui La Liberté? (To Whom Does Freedom Belong?) is the question posed by Uzu on this, their second album.  It proves an emotionally charged interrogation as they plunge into a bleakly allusive exploration of memory, loss, betrayal, and isolation.  To be free is to feel belonging, a state of being ever more out of reach in a polarised world that seeks to actively ferment insecurity and division.

Uzu’s darkly melodic post-punk evocatively envelopes and amplifies this deep-seated sense of unease.  The taut austerity of their delivery gives space to both the locked-in, propulsive rhythm section and the mournfully sinuous melodies of the guitar in equal measure.  Montreal-based, the band include members of the Algerian and Colombian diaspora among their ranks, the former revealing itself in the  impassioned, quavering Arabic vocals.

What emerges is an album that is haunted by a sense of forlorn desolation, an exhaustion at fighting to achieve an equilibrium that is seemingly beyond reach.  Not an acceptance of defeat, but rather a recognition of what must be endured.  This tableau of melancholic precision is vividly embodied by the bass propelled agitation of لا تسألني (Do Not Question Me), the remorseless escalation of في خطر (Endangered), and the seething intensity of أختنق (I Suffocate).

‘Profit off everything you see, Turn everything into a fucking commodity, Maybe there’s something I can do? Probably not, same with you’ (Horrible Future)

We’re fortunate to be enjoying an era where the creative boundaries of hardcore are constantly being pushed in intriguing new directions.  Yet, every now and then, there is a yearning to get back to the essentials.  And that is where Negative Charge are more than happy to oblige with their utterly bracing self-titled debut album.

Negative Charge is a fiercely unadorned statement of intent, one without even a hint of unnecessary extravagance.  This singularity of purpose primes an onslaught that slams home with an unremitting intensity.  Gruffly barked vocals and muscular riffage are underpinned by a rhythm section that is as frenetic as it is burly.  It brims with a primal pit provoking energy that is gratifyingly organic – the breakdowns are bruising without being leant on too heavily – while the squalling solos cut through with a reckless abandon.

The fury that propels this unforgiving battery is similarly uncompromising.  It rails against a society locked into a warped logic that it seems unable, or unwilling, to challenge.  A rationality that commoditises every aspect of existence and works relentlessly to protect privilege, while punishing the marginalised for their predicament.  Personal highlights are the barrelling opener Horrible Future, the bleakly surging Rotten Leather, and the viciously careering Shut Me Off.

I still vividly recall seeing Earth Ball when they played Cafe Oto in May last year touring their debut album, It’s Yours.  It was an evening of quite remarkable sonic intensity, one rooted in improvisation that fashioned a soundscape where the intricacy and experimentation were dedicated to feeding the most utterly unforgiving melding of discordance and groove.

The Vancouver Island band are now back with their second full length, Outside Over There.  The band’s ability to throw a dummy to the listener remains undimmed as the album opens with an excerpt of comedian Stewart Lee amid jarring scrapes of saxophone, before a slab of savagely metallic riffage is unleashed and the saxophone erupts into a full-bore scream to herald the searing opener Helsinki.

Earth Ball’s emphasis is on relentlessly building and layering waves of instrumentation to peaks of cathartic fury, before deconstructing them all over again until nothing but a dissonant whisper remains.  The path to these ecstatic releases is never linear.  The percussion takes its starting point from jazz influences, before locking into to fierce passages of methodical, industrial-accented vehemence.  This provides the foundation for the venomous skronking of the feral saxophone and the guitar, which segues throughout from the melodically serpentine to the altogether more abrasively brawny.  Meanwhile, trumpet, clarinet, and atonal electronics flare amid the barrage.

There is an innate tension as dread and euphoria entwine in seething, cacophonous confrontation.  This disquiet is reflected in the vocals as they morph from spectral murmurs to rhythmic chants and disembodied spoken word.  As Earth Ball sweep from the infectiously choppy Hellfire Relations to the darkly squalling contortions of Where I Come From, and then from the bass shrouded reflections of Behind The Mall to the tempestuous oscillations of And Music Shall Untune The Sky, you have little choice but to submit yourself to the maelstrom.

‘Peace, For the price of tyranny. He explains, At first freedom is the process, He explains, In the end, The Republic, Is the process’ (سر / Secret)

Haram (Forbidden) first emerged in New York a decade ago, exploring through vocalist Nader’s eyes how the horrors of the September 11^th attack had irrevocably reshaped the relationship between the city and its Arabic community, as well as his own struggles to reconcile the conservatism of his upbringing with his own identity.  This first phase saw the band release a full-length, 2017’s ليش الجنة بيتبلش في الجهنم؟ (When You Have Won, You Have Lost) and three EPs, culminating in their 2019 7-inch, وين كنيت بي ١١​/​٩؟ (Where Were You On 9/11?).

They now return in utterly rampant form with their second full-length, ليش الجنة بيتبلش في الجهنم؟ (Why Does Paradise Begin In Hell?), provoked by the murderous military onslaught on Gaza and the paramilitary brutality of ICE on the streets of the US.  The fundamentals of the band’s sound remain firmly rooted in primitively rhythmic, swirling hardcore.  Yet, it has also become notably more expansive, without diluting its essential ferocity.

The production sounds much fuller, which in turn enables each element of the band’s instrumentation to assert itself more forcibly.  The sinuous Middle Eastern guitar melodies and Arabic chants are braided even more ambitiously though the band’s song writing.  Meanwhile, the distinctive cadence of Nader’s Arabic vocals is a touch less harsh, but more assuredly strident and intriguingly varied, providing a powerfully rhythmic counterpoint to the wider battery.

This progression ensures that an album of thrillingly forward thinking hardcore unfurls. Highlights abound.  The moment when the cow bell cymbal segues into the scorching climatic solo to the fiercely contagious كافر (Sinner).  The serpentine rhythms that fuel مسئولية من؟ (Whose Responsibility?).  The woozily swinging bass line and chanted vocals of خبي جميلتك هذا لالك (Hide Your Beauty, It Is For You).  The searingly atmospheric riff that shrouds the bleak spoken word of بدون طيار (Drone).  Throughout Haram reaffirm their desire to confront and to expand the boundaries of hardcore.  Not through performative provocation, but by posing the uncomfortable questions and taking their music in ever more inventive directions.

For more background on Haram check out, The War On The Other.

Streetlights cast pools of shimmering light on the rain slick pavements.  Windows glow with the warmth of home, others remain silently darkened.  Ambitiously angular towers soar above tightly packed terrace streets, before increasingly morphing into glass and steel blocks that reek of investment yields.

This is not just a journey through the night.  It is a journey through a city’s history.  From the post-war determination to build a city for the public good, to the decline of the 1970s fostered by paternalistic neglect, and then the wholesale disposal of public land for private gain that has swamped London since the 1980s.  A city now designed for rentier profits, rather than its people.

Our guides for this nocturnal tour are London Clay, a duo comprising Hygiene drummer Pat Daintith on electronics and Gema Oliver on vocals, on their debut full-length, Private View.  The atmosphere is an ever shifting one – claustrophobic yet expansive, immersive yet resolutely allusive.  It sweeps from the throbbing dark wave of Desire Lines to the languorously shimmering, Jesu-like shoegaze of Apricity, and then from the deceptively hypnotic Smashing Time to the crisply percussive Straphangar with dextrous ease.

Drawing on the writings on London of Maureen Duffy, Olaf Stapledon, and Patrick Hamilton, the vocals deliver a spectral narrative.  For the most part, they are hauntingly ethereal presence, before the unsettling lullaby of Faraday and the uneasy murmurings of The Midnight Bell startle you from your reverie.  What ultimately emerges is a defiant ode to the resilience of a city.  Much has been squandered, but all is not yet lost, a sense of optimism reflected amid the skeletal piano and melodic drone of the closer, Clifton Rise.

‘There is no language of freedom, People have been exploited, There is no hope for justice, Rights have been suppressed, Oppression, oppression, We will fight’ (Atyachar / Atrocity)

Shatki hail from Barcelona and this is their self-titled debut album.  They feature members of Belgrado, including Patrycja Proniewska dusting off the drum sticks she yielded to such effect with her first band Sect.  Yet those place markers are in many ways misleading.  Shakti, which speaks to the Hindu concept of the cosmic power that gives life to the universe, is a project that is very much driven by the Indian heritage of vocalist Nirzar.

Bouncing bass lines and punchily limber drums unfurl a rhythmic base that gets even the most reluctant of feet urgently moving, while the guitar follows its own tautly writhing path.  Well-judged samples are intertwined throughout and set the scene for the strident, combative Marathi vocals.  Rhythmic snarls, boisterous chants, and ominous whispers are woven together with an irrepressible energy.  Personal stand outs include the frenetic agitations of Lahan Pani (Small Water), the pulsing exhortations of Matala (To The Opinion), the darkly infectious Andolan (Agitation), and the raucous finale of Purvichi Adchan (The Previous Problem)

The album maps out a sarcasm laced lyrical exploration of what it is to be a member of the South Asian diaspora.  It questions why after such a long period so many western societies still struggle to culturally accept these communities and the legacies of the colonial dismemberment of India itself.  But amid the dark humour, the analysis is cognisant of the complexities that further shroud these issues, not least the rise of Modi’s right-wing Hindu nationalism.  The determination of power and wealth to preserve its privilege is, perhaps, the one universal, immutable constant.

‘Anti-social cruelty, Mind is broken, no empathy, It’s a choice, Cities choose every day, They don’t care, There’s no will, so there’s no way’ (Ruins)

Hailing from Iowa City, I was rather excited to see that Bootcamp’s ranks include members of Beyond Peace, whose two EPs I must confess I was rather partial to.  And this new venture is equally enticing.  Following up on to last year’s debut 7-inch, Controlled Burn, they now return with a truly venomous first full-length, Time’s Up.

Imagine a straight up, blisteringly fast US hardcore base, fuelled by furious d-beat rhythms, with a healthy dash of rock’n’roll swagger to finish, and you’ll start to get the picture.  And while the base elements are relatively straightforward, the sheer unbridled intensity of the delivery as the band rampage through ten tracks in just fourteen minutes is utterly invigorating.  The surging Freak Show, the deliciously catchy Ruins, and the bruising despair of Decision all land with a particularly lacerating velocity.

The rasping vocals inject another layer of ferocity as they passionately deconstruct the malaise of contemporary America.  The propping up of overseas dictatorships, the ravages of financialised healthcare, the disdain for the homeless rather than the causes of homelessness, the dehumanising attitudes towards immigrant communities, and the tyranny of the car are all firmly in the crosshairs.  But there is also an undeniable fury at ourselves, at our own complicity in allowing these forces to shape our world for so long.  Even now, with ‘the waters and fascism rising’ (Decision) we seem frozen in denial.

‘Solace in silence, Downpouring rain, Welcome the nightmare, Mankind enslaved, A final cry, Forgotten corpse smiles as we die’ (Screams At The Sky)

Now, this is an absolute battering ram of a record. The debut album from Philadelphia’s Psych-War is a savage statement in the finest traditions of Swedish hardcore.  The base elements of galloping metallic crust riffage and remorseless d-beat rhythms are, of course, firmly in place.  Yet, it is the sheer unbridled conviction of the delivery that sends you reeling for cover.

There is a really satisfying muscularity to the riffage, while the darkly melodic leads and squalling, blues-fired solos cut through the sonic violence with a piercing clarity.  The roared vocals harshly evoke an apocalyptic vision of endless war and climatic collapse fuelled by imperial delusions and systematic greed.

The barbarous impact is further heightened by the skilful manner in which the band marshal this intensity to reap its full effect – each track hits home with a sledgehammer velocity all of its very own.  The highlights come thick and fast.  From the swaggering brutality of Screams At The Sky to the utterly spiteful riff that defines The Blood, by way of the groove-laden propulsion of Horrendous Stressor, Psych-War leave you nowhere to hide.

‘Claiming to be on the side of right, But so entranced by the spotlight, Enthralled you steal, From mouths you should feed, Taking the moment, From those that need’ (Complete Outsider)

Portland’s Hellshock, having initially made their mark in the noughties, first returned to the fray in 2022 with their self-titled fourth album.  That was their first release in thirteen years, igniting the band’s return to touring, and the next instalment has now arrived in the form of XXV.

The heart of the band’s sound remains rooted in its original stenchcore roots, the gutturally barked vocals, crushing slabs of riffage, and steamroller rhythm section evoking the spirit of early Bolt Thrower with a dark relish.  However, XXV also sees the band continue to build on the more melodic expressions that were first in evidence on Hellshock.  Neocrust melancholy fuels the elegiac aura that is riven through the album, while the soaring solos lean notably more towards NWOBHM inclinations than the thrashier eruptions of the band’s earliest releases.  This impressively organic evolution can, perhaps in part, be attributed to the arrival of Todd Burdette (Tragedy, Nightfell) to partner Brian Hopper in fashioning the band’s dual guitar onslaught.

Hellshock’s evolution is most vividly captured by the funereal melodicism of Dead Hands, the venomous velocity of The Hero Returns, and the bass fuelled swagger of Oblivion.  Lyrically, the band continue to deploy bleakly allusive imagery to explore a society increasingly at the mercy of a corrupt political class and self-serving tech barons.  And it is certainly a timely soundtrack as Portland once again finds itself at the epicentre of resisting America’s increasingly brazen flirtation with the apparatus of authoritarianism.

‘Silhouette, ombre scadenti, sguardi inesistenti, è più facile incolpare chi si ama, che indistinte figure, apprezzare ciò che non esiste’ (Ombre Scadenti) / ‘Silhouettes, decaying shadows, nonexistent gazes, it’s easier to blame those we love than indistinct figures, to appreciate what doesn’t exist’ (Decaying Shadows)

Astio (Hatred) make a thoroughly welcome return with their debut album, Tempio Inganno (Temple Of Deceit), and follow-up to the 2023 EP, Bocche Stanche (Tired Mouths).  Hailing from Trento in northern Italy, Astio fuse rhythmically surging, melodically sombre post-punk with semi-shouted, anarcho-punk leaning vocals to infectious effect.

Conceptually, the album builds on the themes of their debut to construct the notion of Tempio Inganno.  It speaks of the devices, both consciously and subconsciously, that we construct to allow us to turn a blind eye to the realities of our world.  The veil that enables us to ignore that our comfort is frequently rooted in the suffering of others.  A cognitive dissonance that protects us from our own complicity, normalises inequity, and justifies our inaction.

What emerges is an album of starkly competing tensions.  Taut yet fluid, uplifting yet unsettling, an intrinsic conflict further amplified by the warm clarity of the production versus the angular agitations at the heart of Astio’s energy.  Personal highlights include the swirling, almost Middle Eastern-tinged melodies of Poco Di Me Ricordo (I Remember Little Of Myself), the mournful escalation of Carezza Violenta (Violent Caress), and the skronking saxophone lacerations that fuel Astio Totale (Total Hatred).

‘I’ve seen a dead man walking, I’ve seen his heart rot on the vine, I cried for ages trying, Just to shake him outta my mind’ (Dead Man)

Nyx Division are back with the follow-up to their 2022 debut, Dark Star.   Midnight Lights sees the Portland band continue to explore the edgelands of where the uplifting swing of 1980s’ new wave and the melancholic shades of post-punk intertwine and fuse into new forms.  Musically and aesthetically, it is an album that draws with equal relish on both of these influences to conjure a claustrophobic, gothic shrouded tableau.

Beneath the glittering veneer of neon lights and late-night hedonism though lies a much darker reality.  Midnight Lights tells the story of vocalist Domino Monet’s escape from a relationship mired in domestic abuse, and how it is only on breaking free that she has been able to comprehend the resilience and strength that it took for her survive, and to shed the chains of normalised violence.

Mournfully serpentine melodies that morph into boldly strutting metal-tinged solos and a punchily limber rhythm section form the band’s bedrock.  Yet, perhaps, it is the vocals that deliver the defining energy as the waves of catchy hooks and soaring choruses vividly contrast with Monet’s own lived experience.  It is a heady blend of baroque theatre and infectious pop sensibility that comes together to particularly striking effect on the darkly propulsive Dead Man, the defiant euphoria of Soldier Of Love, and the anthemic bombast of Desert Rose.

‘Submit to evil, Makes you feel strong, Slaying the innocent, For flag and freedom, There’s no peace in that’ (Hell On Earth)

Last year’s debut 7-inch from Traumatizer was a lesson in raw, metallic, blown-out sonic violence.  If anything, their searing new five track EP, Nuclear War Machine, is an even more visceral detonation.

The Haarlem band continue to furiously meld thrashing guitars in the vein of Sacrilege with blistering d-beat rhythms and viscously unhinged solos.  Meanwhile, the rasping, fiercely confrontational vocals denounce the brutal horrors inflicted on the people of Gaza, wider global militarisation, and our seemingly inexorable march towards technologically enforced feudalism.

Amid this truly uncompromising onslaught, Traumatizer still find scope to deftly expand their sound. This is, perhaps, most vividly captured by the contagious vocal climax to the title track, the raucous swinging groove of Dead End, and the discordant melodicism that flares during Murder.

‘Don’t like the old, Don’t like the young, I hate middle age, And Metallica’s “One”, Don’t like Idles, Or Mac DeMarco, I haven’t heard ‘em, I like Clarko’ (I Don’t Like Anything)

As you smile at the album’s title, you could be guilty of thinking that the return of Citric Dummies would see them continuing merrily along in the spirit of 2023’s Zen And The Arcade of Beating Your Ass.  And, in many respects, you would be spot on.  This is still rapid-fire melodic punk that bristles with a pugnacious hardcore snap, a raucous garage rock energy, and a deliciously irreverent rock’n’roll swagger.

Yet, it is also different.  There is a discernible increase in the intensity of their delivery – it feels bolder, tighter, and, dare one suggest it, even faster.  When a band’s persona is so rooted in the spirit of satire, it is easy for this to sometimes obscure the quality of their musicianship.  On Split With Turnstile, Citric Dummies robustly ensure that both elements of their music are absolutely to the fore.

From the utterly whiplash opening of I Don’t Like Anything and I Can’t Relate, the Minneapolis band are at full throttle as they sweep onto the solo fuelled climax to I Can’t Stand The Weekend and the wildly careering My Life’s A Total Sham.  This high-octane energy is matched only by their relish at revelling in life’s absurdities, both large and small.  Alienation from the anodyne, weekend nihilism, and soul sapping workplaces all get the treatment, as do the joys of a good Chinese takeaway and, of course, imagining life as a napkin.

‘When they tell us, To play the game, That it all stays the same, Oh, it’s all an act, When we’re told not to relate, That it’s easier to hate, Oh, in a mechanical world’ (Kinetic World)

Alluringly deadpan vocals.  Contagiously crystalline shards of guitar.  Throbbing synths and bass lines.  Crisply sharp percussion.  It is a glacially fluid soundtrack.  Coldly hypnotic, yet also imbued with a strangely comforting warmth, it works its way into your very bones.  It provokes the need to move – not flamboyantly, but with an irresistible precision, nonetheless.

This can only mean the thoroughly welcome return of Memphis’ Optic Sink following their excellent 2023 album, Glass Blocks.  The band continue to meld a sombre post-punk melodicism with looping dance beats to subtly intoxicating effect.  The tautly constructed arrangements belie the rich detailing, a quality shared by the austere vocals as they seamlessly shift intonation as moods almost imperceptibly mutate.

It creates an atmosphere of beguiling uncertainty.  The sense of reality slowly revealing itself manifests itself as the album segues from the limber disquiet of Construction and the sinister unfurling of Don’t Look Down to the pulsing, hopeful urgency of Kinetic World and the languid euphoria of Luxury Of Honesty.  Amid the distorted reflections and fragments of memory, nothing is quite what it seems.  A monochrome, blandly repetitive world seeks to disguise the potential for change and embed that most powerful of lies – what is now, is forever.

‘Маниш так, Ти тінью на стіні граєш, Знову ти мене гукаєш, Темна як спогад, Дика як повінь, Тиха як сповідь, В останній день’ (Темна, як спогад) / ‘You beckon, You play with a shadow on the wall, You call me again, Dark as a memory, Wild as a flood, Quiet as a confession, On the last day’ (Dark As A Memory)

From the bleakly foreboding opening chords to the title track Все по колу, знову (All In A Circle, Again), it is if something primal is stirring.  An ineffable sense of reaching back to the very origins of humanity to understand what drives our seemingly insatiable appetite for war.  Morwan is the solo project of Kyiv’s Alex Ashtaui.  Vse Po Kolu, Znovu is not a direct exploration of the frontline savagery of Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, but rather of the insidious psychological consequences that flow from being sucked into the path of such horror.

It speaks to the violent unravelling of what you thought to be immutable, an uncertainty that seems without end, and an existential, unrelenting sense of dread.  It is this very sense of dread that infuses Morwan’s intensely rhythmic post-punk with a notably more muscular dynamic than previously, building on the darker evolution already evident on 2023’s Svitaye, Palaye.

The pounding dance inflected rhythms and droning guitar remain the album’s backbone, while the mournful Middle Eastern tinged melodies and forcefully chanted vocals draw upon Ashtaui’s shared Ukrainian-Arabic heritage to haunting effect.  The intensity is all enveloping from the industrial fuelled Без обличчя (Faceless) to the ominously danceable agitations of Мої дні (My Days) and from the detached menace of Остання мить (Last Minute) to the remorseless escalation of Чорні схили (Black Slopes), before the bleakly mesmeric close of Не чекай (Don’t Wait).  Rarely can the compulsion to dance and to despair at our own future have been so closely intertwined.

‘Thought I would sense that your love was a curse, I kept repeating “It could be worse”, You touch my body like it’s in a hearse, Museum glass ’round a heart set to burst’ (Museum Glass)

Strange Devotion is the second solo album from singer-songwriter Maura Weaver, who first emerged with Cincinatti pop punks Mixtapes, and the follow-up to 2023’s I Was Due For A Heartbreak.  And it continues to see Weaver lace her indie punk inclinations with a jangly yet tantalisingly bittersweet pop sensibility.

As you might anticipate, it is Weaver’s vocals that form the album’s beating heart.  Richly melodic yet also characterfully layered, they deftly see-saw between the tender and the steel of quiet resolution.  They astutely draw on the darkly surrealist imagery of David Lynch’s films to colour a deeply personal narrative that evokes her determination not to allow adversity to overwhelm her life.

However, this is not to underplay the power of the wider songwriting.  Working closely with her longtime collaborator John Hoffmann (of fellow Cincinnati bands, Beef and Vacation), Weaver’s deftly crafted compositions assuredly work their way under the skin.  The warm fuzz of the guitar and crisply understated percussion are enriched with the distinctive twang of the slide guitar together with flares of swirling viola and skronking synths.  Personal highlights include the woozy morphing of Do Nothing, the haunting reflections of the rather beautiful Museum Glass, and the catchily layered Breakfast.

‘Won’t fix the roof, But they’re raising the rent, Bleeding us dry of every last cent, Give us the boot, And just lining their pockets, Won’t even fix electrical sockets’ (Landlord)

With two demos under their belt, Primitive Impulse arrive like a roving pub brawl of wildly swinging haymakers and spilt pints with their debut album, Piss It Away.  This is hardcore punk in its most primeval form – filthy riffs and an even filthier attitude, primed to party or fight, the call is yours.  The Cincinnati band do not look to disguise their love of Poison Idea, either musically or aesthetically.  They do, however, inject their interpretation with an unbridled ferocity and nihilistic vigour that lands with the crunch of a well-timed head butt.

The fiercely guttural vocals, surging riffs, reckless solos, and pounding rhythm section unleash a rabidly raw onslaught that slams home with a particular velocity during the brutal brevity of Landlord, the title track’s venomous breakdown, and the groove fuelled climax to Your Debt.  And beneath the belching belligerence is an uncompromising, clear-eyed denunciation of a society built on worker exploitation, consumer debt, and landlordism, a poisonous cocktail driving people to the very brink of their sanity every day.

‘You’re confused with what you believe and what you know.  In the dark and distracted.  Now do what you’re told. Indoctrination is crippling all the young and the old’ (Indoctrination)

Mason City’s Why Bother? are nothing if not prolific, averaging two releases a year (all on Feel It) since their 2021 debut album, A Year Of Mutations.  And the real kicker, of course, is that they are so prolific that it fuels rather than dampens their creativity.  Whereas some might fall into a groove of flattening repetition, Why Bother? have come to so intrinsically understand the dynamics of their sound, that every release sees them evolve in intriguing new directions.

The fundamentals remain solid and yet are consistently flexed into eerily atmospheric new shapes.  Lo-fi garage punk is woven through with a decidedly off-kilter pop sensibility.  Then the languidly drawled vocals, hazily hallucinogenic synths, and darkly surreal lyrics shroud proceedings in a surprisingly unsettling gothic reverie.

The cover art – Vanitas by 17^th century painter Philippe de Champaigne – sets the tone perfectly for Case Studies with its spectrally allusive lyrical meditations on mortality, time, and how our understanding of them is shaped by our belief systems.  It is thoroughly evocative journey and as it morphs from the catchily cosmic fuzz of In Between The Distance to the ominously languorous Feeding The Birds, and then the brittle melodicism of Still Remain, it consistently drops a shimmying shoulder to leave our expectations floundering in its wake.

‘When it comes time to make stand, Will you theorise and obfuscate and say we don’t understand, When it comes time to make a stand, Do you think you can?’ (Affirmative Denial)

As your hips are insidiously lured into ill-advised gyrations, you find yourself wondering what element of JJ And The A’s fizzing armoury has provoked the manic grin spreading across your face.  Is it the cavorting anarchy of the organs? The contagiously whiplash rhythms? The energetically febrile vocals?  Of course, it’s all three as they were moulded into a rollicking carnivalesque fury.

JJ And The A’s have honed their craft across two cracking EPs, 2023’s self-titled debut and last year’s Eyeballer.  Both were defined by an unquenchable, irrepressible energy and I did wonder quite how this would translate to a full album.  I needn’t have worried as it has enabled the Copenhagen-based band to subtly expand their sound without in anyway diluting their velocity.  The closest proxy I can conjure is the darkly hedonistic spirit of The World/Inferno Friendship Society doused in SoCal punk vigour, with a healthy dash of extra hardcore stomp.

Each track delivers a slap to the face of a singular intensity, with the bristling In Vogue, the fabulously unhinged Needles, and the frenetically bouncing The Wraith, my personal highlights.  Amid these raucously uplifting eruptions, the ever-shapeshifting vocals cast a blackly wry eye over the state of the world from sweatshop exploitation and the inauthenticity of curated lives to the poisonous legacies of deindustrialisation and colonial oppression.

‘Fire is not that with whose flame the candle laughs, Look to the moths and where they gather’ (Taken from the writings of 14^th century Persian poet, Hafez)

Ameretat are a duo drawn from the Iranian diaspora, with both bandmembers still having family living in Iran.  This album though is rooted in a much broader interpretation of what it is to be of the Iranic people, a shared cultural and linguistic heritage that spans throughout west and south Asia.  It draws on the folklore of the region through verse and writings in Avestan, Kurdish, Luri, and Persian to explore living in the shadow of the theocratic tyranny that governs modern-day Iran.  Ameretat itself is the Avestan word for indestructible and the deity representing immortality, or perhaps more accurately, the eternal cycle of life and death in Persian mythology.

The fierce sonic accompaniment is one rooted in the driving rhythms of metallic crust and harshly duelling anarcho-punk inspired vocals.  This onslaught is then braided through with Iranic folk instrumentation so deftly that it conjures a deeply evocative atmosphere, which is not only intensely mesmerising but also feels utterly intrinsic.

The sweeping propulsion – which is primed by the haunting Ghazal-e-ātish (Ode To The Fire) – dictates that the album evolves as almost two seamless movements.  From the swirling rhythms of Posht-e-pardeh (Behind The Veil) to the sombre escalation of Koshtan-e ye Sag-e-āb (The Killing Of A Sacred Water Dog), and from the venomous climax to Mohnate Digarān (The Hardship Of Others) to the euphoric violence of Deyr-e-kharāb (Broken Monastery / Ruined World), before the choral finale of Jamal Jamaloo, Ameretat’s grip is absolutely unrelenting.

‘Te levantas y vas al baño y miras tu rostro, Y sabes que ese rostro no es el tuyo, Sabas que la que esta frente a tí no erec túm, Es un cuerpo extraño’ (Cenizas En El Rostro) / ‘You get up to go to the bathroom, You look at your face in the mirror, And you know that the person in front of of you, Isn’t you, It’s a foreign body’ (Ashes On The Face)

The debut album from London’s Traidora, Una Mujer Trans Sin País (Trans Woman Without A Country) is as raw as it comes, both sonically and thematically.  The rabid rhythms of Latin American punk are melded with searing metallic crust, amid flares of death metal inspired riffage, and harshly blackened Spanish vocals.  It is a truly unforgiving battery that reaches its zenith on the brutally uncompromising Disforia Eterna (Eternal Dysphoria) and the anarcho-punk infused Cenizas En El Rostro and Dónde Estás? (Where Are You?).

While Traidora has evolved into a four piece for this release, it initially began as the solo project of vocalist, Eva Leblanc, a Venezuelan trans woman, who released her debut 7-inch Un Cuerpo Trans Lleno de Odio (A Trans Body Full Of Hate) in 2023.  The lyrics remain deeply personal, a stark and, at times, harrowing exploration of the dysphoria that has shaped her life and the systematic prejudice that has confronted her as a trans woman and emigrant, as well as the wider struggles of the Mapuche and Palestinian peoples.

The album serves as a salutary reminder of the need for hardcore to continue to evolve and enable new perspectives and lived experiences to be explored.  Of how even now seminal bands, such as say Los Crudos, have had to wrestle for initial acceptance, initially being deemed by some to be overly confrontational.  Una Mujer Trans Sin País is Traidora’s powerful call for the right to be heard.

‘Al pasar los días, la ciudad despierta, Y se encuentra un cuerpo que tan solo apesta, Al “Azul Pastel” le dan una medalla, Y en la nota roja solo se comenta’ (Azul Pastel) / ‘As the days pass, the city wakes up, And a body is found that only stinks, “Pastel Blue” is given a medal, And the crime news only comments’ (Pastel Blue)

Welcome to a city of ghosts.  A city stalked by the spectres of lost futures.  A city steeped in a languid sense of decay, one fermented by entrenched corruption, punctured by eruptions of police violence.  A city that isolates and intimidates.  Yet the desire to break free from suffocating traditions and build something different is tangible, its beat growing stronger everyday.  Welcome to 1980s’ Mexico City.

Las Ánimas Del Cuarto Obscuro (The Souls Of The Dark Room) were short-lived, self-releasing just this their 1988 debut album, before morphing into Las Animas, the solo project of vocalist Antonio Sánchez Uribe.  The core of the band’s sound is rooted in the melancholic essentials of contemporary post-punk yet imbued with elements that root it very much in its era, from the quirkily skittering keys to the gleaming sheen of the solos.

There is also a definite sense of experimentation, of a band grappling with how best to forge their competing influences into a coherent sound, unencumbered by any sense of convention.  This leads to some intriguing contrasts from the infectiously surging Puebla Fantasma (Ghost Town), the sombrely serpentine Aperecida (Appeared), and the gothic-tinged Azul Pastel (Pastel Blue) to the off-kilter fragility of Samarkanda (Samarkand) and La Mosca (The Fly), before the languorously expansive closer, Hasta Luego (See You Later).

Breathing new life into this lost classic of Mexican post-punk has been something of a labour of love for La Vida Es Un Mus.  And we are now rewarded for this patience and persistence with what is a thoroughly beguiling, deeply atmospheric album.