‘Un eco silba lejos, Cada muro guarda, Secretos, líneas muertas, “Somos polvo en el aire”, El olvido se hace eterno, Un letargo tan glacial, Un desorden sempiterno’ / ‘An echo whistles far away, Each wall keeps, Secrets, dead lines, “We are dust in the air”, Oblivion becomes eternal, A lethargy so glacial, An everlasting disorder’ (Nimbus)

First discovering Joliette was one of those fine nights when you go to a gig and are simply blown away by a band who you barely know.  I’d popped along to Bermondsey’s DIY Space back in 2018 to catch Cassus, who were as excellent as ever, but knew little of what to expect from the evening’s headliners.  I was soon left reeling by a performance of absolute searing intensity, an unrelenting push-pull between velocity and intricacy.

Joliette are now back with their fourth full-length, Pérdidas Variables (Variable Losses), a seething psycho-geographical evocation of their Mexico City home.  Drawing on both physical and psychological inspirations, the impassioned vocals explore the routines and ruptures of urban life through the intertwined threads of memory and loss, renewal and decay, the comforting and the disconcerting.

Musically, the band continue to forge their own thoroughly distinctive emotional hardcore, deftly exploiting the tensions between their chaotic screamo and more expansive post-metal influences, while never diluting the hardcore heft that firmly roots their sound.  The powerfully supple rhythm section relishes both the complex and the spare in equal measure and provides the perfect foil for the serpentine, fiercely melodic guitar.

From the surging agitation of Limítrofe (Borderline) to the darkly pulsing Cielo Sordo (Deaf Sky), the fervency of Joliette’s embrace is all enveloping.   The album’s impact is, perhaps, though best captured by the title track itself.   The haunting guitar lead coils around your heart with a mesmerising stealth, sucking you ever deeper into its reverie, before the ethereally layered vocals deliver an utterly cathartic release.

Totem is Pygmy Lush’s fourth album and was initially recorded in 2016, but the band entered an indefinite hiatus before it could be released.  With Pygmy Lush now reanimated, it has thankfully been saved from the recording archives to herald their return.

Pygmy Lush are arguably the very definition of ‘post everything’.  They are the project that three members of pageninetynine went on to found after the dissolution of that band.  And musically, they draw greedily yet inventively on a palette of influences that span from hardcore to gothic Americana, by way of noise rock and even a dash of grunge.  This is their first full-length since 2011’s Old Friends, and it manages to conjure an atmosphere where each of the elements feels warmly familiar yet, at the same time, strangely unsettling as they continually morph and reformulate in quite unexpected patterns.

Jarring post-hardcore eruptions, such as the opener House Of Blood (Butch’s Monster), form the album’s abrasive scaffolding.  However, it is on the more experimental tracks where the band hit their most compelling stride.  From the eerily propulsive drone of Algorithmic Mercy (Prayers Printed Directly Into A Shredder) to the languorously escalating February Song, and from the darkly infectious The Puppeteer to the expansively shimmering close of Nonsensical Whimper, it is an album that teases and distorts its inspirations into alluring new shapes. It proves a richly hypnotic soundtrack to a world that seems to be inexorably, inescapably disintegrating before our very eyes.

‘A silent spring, An offering, Soil swallows whole what used to cast a shadow, Disintegrate, accept our fate: man must fall’ (All Is Dust)

Those unfortunate enough to share my home will know that, when my mood reaches a suitable depth of rueful contemplation, I am prone to reaching for Bleached Cross’s recent split album with True Faith, Columns Of Impenetrable Light.  The desire to belt out the chorus to the absolutely banging Grief’s Eternal Wound simply becomes too overwhelming.  Very uplifting for me, rather less so for everyone else.

Having missed the band’s self-titled debut album when it was first released in 2022, I was delighted to see that it was receiving this second press.  Hailing from Chicago and featuring among their ranks all three members of Frail Body, Bleached Cross have adopted ‘oppressive post-punk’ to describe their music.  And while this certainly captures the haunting claustrophobia that permeates their music, it rather understates the vibrant 1980s’ pop sensibility that vividly colours these more sinister impulses.

Bleakly melancholic guitars and coldly pulsing synths are fuelled by industrial inclined percussion, while the powerfully melodic lead vocals and soaring choruses are underscored at varying times by both scathingly blackened eruptions and contrastingly uplifting choral flourishes.  This decidedly heady mix proves a darkly atmospheric foil to the lyrical exploration of the ravages of grief, religious delusion, and humanity’s own increasingly fraught future.  Personal stand out tracks are the desolate euphoria of Mercy and the swirling, mournful eddies of All Is Dust.

Regular touring partners Skizophrenia! and Deletär join forces to unleash a raucously contrasting split four-track EP.

‘Don’t wanna live, In your delusion, Erase my existence from there, Throw away stereotype, Look with your own eyes’ (Stereotype)

Side one sees Japanese raw punks Skizophrenia! take centre stage.  Both of their tracks, Stereotype and Needless, are reworked versions of tracks previously released on now rather hard to find compilations – 2011’s The Action 7-inch and the more recent 2024 SKZ Omnibus CD respectively.  Active for some twenty years, the Tsuyama-based band unleash a typically high-octane onslaught that sees the catchily upbeat melodicism of their 1980s’ SoCal hardcore inspirations filtered through a rather more caustic lens.

‘Justice expeditive, Justice biaisée, Defense bâclée, Un avenir detruit’ (La Balance Et Le Glaive) / ‘Expeditious justice, Biased justice, Botched defence, A future destroyed’ (The Scales And The Sword)

Deletär share a similar love of harshly boisterous hardcore, but their influences are decidedly more Scandinavian in origin.  Hailing from Saint-Étienne and featuring members of Bleakness, Bombardment, and Litige, this split is their first release since their second self-titled full-length in 2023.  Relentless waves of riffage are the cornerstone of their battery, while the bruising rhythm section remorselessly underpins the flaring solos and burly shout-along choruses.  The gruff French vocals tackle themes of a corrupted justice system (La Balance Et Le Glaive) and the paralysis of self-doubt (Funambule / Tightrope Walker).

‘Teet mitä tahansa sulle kerrotaan, Ei omaa mieltään tarvi käyttää ollenkaan, Sä olet kiitollinen etkä koskaan valita, Hymyillen antaa paholaiselle sielunsa’ (Sätkynukke) / ‘You do whatever you’re told, You don’t have to use your own mind at all, You’re grateful and never complain, Smiling, you give the devil your soul’ (Puppet)

Mua Et Voi Omistaa (You Can’t Own Me) is the debut album from Helsinki’s Plasma, who share their guitarist with Ignorance, and it’s an absolutely rollicking ride.  Firmly rooted in the traditions of Finnish punk, Plasma refashion these inspirations into an almost breathless, no-holds barred onslaught.  The swinging rhythm section, blessed as it is with some deliciously killer bass lines, is at the heart of the band’s sound, locking in to a taut synchronicity with the fiercely lean guitar.

The vocals veer from an urgent, rasping snarl to cleaner, more melodic expressions, by way of strident semi-shouted word tirades, with a seamless ease.  Lyrically, the album desperately confronts society’s self-destructive tendencies, calling out our knowing complicity in the cycle of exploitation, while reaffirming the importance of maintaining a robust sense of self amid the inhumanity.

The intensity doesn’t drop from even a moment, and nor does the subtle inventiveness braided throughout the aggression.  From the blistering Mätä Pilvilinna (Rotten Cloud Castle) to the unexpected psychedelic melodic flourishes of Ei Kunniaa (No Honour) and the raucous positivity of Katson Tulevaan (I Look To The Future), Plasma will not be contained.

‘Communidades destruidas, Em nome do progresso, Invadídas…Empurrados pela ganãncia, Obrigados a sair com intolerãncia’ (Genocídio Por Gentrificação) / ‘Communities destroyed, In the name of progress, Invaded… Pushed by greed, Forced to leave with intolerance’ (Genocide By Gentrification)

Hailing from Macedonia, Sistema Obsoleto (Obsolete System) make their debut with a seething 7-inch, Esmagado Pela Engrenagem Capitalista (Crushed By The Capitalist Gear).  The EP title sets the scene perfectly as does the band’s logo which draws on the band’s founding inspirations – the lightning fast hardcore of Totalitär and the anarcho-punk political convictions of Crass.  This is a vision that the band realise musically in compelling fashion.

Blistering fast, d-beat fuelled hardcore? Check.  Chunky bass lines and manically frenzied drums underpin the ferocious guitars and squalling, blues-tinged solos.  The first four tracks are remorselessly fast, before matters are brought to a crushing climax by the sludge mired closer, Ideias Venenosas (Poisonous Ideas).

Politically charged convictions?  Check.  The rabid Portuguese vocals weave together a compelling deconstruction of our late-stage capitalist malaise.  They tackle themes of economic exploitation on the title track, urban displacement on Genocídio Por Gentrificação, and surveillance capitalism on Alucinação Consensual (Consensual Hallucination), before O Oprimido Vira O Opressor (The Oppressed Becomes The Oppressor) explores the cycles of violence propagated throughout history.

‘Accumulated stress and frustration, Your mind full of noise, Let us hold tightly the hand that reaches out to the future, and liberate it’ (Discharge Your Noise)

Contrast Attitude, who come from Mie in Japan, have been unleashing a barbarous raw punk barrage for over two decades now. And, while they have a released an array of EPs and splits during this time, Discharge Your Noise is only the band’s second full-length, following their 2009 debut album, Apocalyptic Raw Assault.

And from the venomous riff that propels the aptly titled opening track, Relentless Assault, it is abundantly clear that the trio’s ferocity is as untamed as it ever was.  The bleakly distorted guitar retains a satisfying muscularity amid the dissonance and recklessly unhinged solos, as the swaggering rhythm section injects a notable rock’n’roll swagger to the savage fusillade.

Meanwhile, the harsh, barked vocals explore a world shaped by indifference and complicit silence in the face of social oppression and accelerating climatic meltdown.  However, it is not a narrative entirely without hope, remaining defiant that an alternative future can be realised.  Along with the opener, personal stand outs are the choppily surging Disclose Naked Myself and the bruising groove of the title track.

‘We sang the songs of the end times, Not knowing they’ve already come, Not quick like the slaughter of butchers, But a slow rotting evil, devouring one by one’ (Wasteland)

Subversive Rite were a New York hardcore band, active between 2016 and 2002.  They released their much-acclaimed debut album, Songs For The End Times, in 2019 and returned to the studio in 2022 to record their second, Apocalypse Zone.  Unfortunately, the band broke up shortly afterwards and the album was mothballed, with members of the band going on to play in a myriad of new projects, including Abism, Fairytale, Suffocating Madness, Tower, and Vaxine.  Thankfully, Acute Noise Manufacture have now saved the album to serve as a fitting swan song.

On this second full-length, Subversive Rite continue to hone their blistering take on mid-1980s’ UK hardcore, ferociously melding both UK82 and proto-thrash metal inspirations.  The band lean a touch more towards their hardcore roots in terms of the galloping rhythms, while the scorching melodic solos are imbued with a notably more metallic influence.  This influence is shared with the stridently clean, rhythmically taut vocals that can’t help but recall early Sacrilege, which is no bad thing at all.

Either side of the haunting mid-album interlude, these elements are fashioned into a battery that hits home with an unrelenting, bulldozer intensity.  This perfectly evokes the lyrical envisioning of a world hurtling inexorably towards a dystopian future of endless war and environmental breakdown.  Amid this unrelenting ferocity, the contagious escalation of Maniac and the bleak groove of Wasteland are to be particularly relished.

‘Countess Thatchula, Political vampire, Her reign of terror, Must soon expire, Sinks her fangs, Into this nation, Sucks out jobs, Spits out inflation’ (Thatchula)

Ripcord are a band whose long-term legacy has, perhaps, gone onto to outstrip their initial impact, as groundbreaking as that was.  By furiously melding UK82 and US hardcore influences, together with a healthy slug of thrash metal, the band unleashed a dynamic that was to undeniably reshape the future of hardcore punk.

The band hailed from Weston Super Mare and were a defining force in English hardcore between 1984 and 1998, releasing two full-lengths and a slew of EPs.  One of their earliest releases was The Damage Is Done, which the band self-released as a flexi 7-inch in 1986.  The nine tracks from this release constitute side one of this reissue, together with two additional tracks.

The remastering of the album is spot on – punchy and lending a fresh clarity without diluting the intrinsic rawness and just shy of sloppy ferocity that characterised the original material, including the distinctive crumpled drums.  And the tracks still burst with the seething fury that fuelled the era as the band challenged the warped Thatcherite ideology that not only inflicted huge social dislocation at the time but laid the groundwork for many of our current inequalities.  Kiss Of Death continues to land with a particular sledgehammer velocity.

Side Two captures a show in their hometown that same year.  The discordance is upped a further notch as the live intensity of the band is vibrantly captured in a nine-track set that includes six tracks from The Damage Is Done, plus three from the band’s self-titled demo also released in 1986.  The accompanying lyric booklet pulled together by Quality Control HQ and La Vida Es Un Mus Discos is excellent, including several extensive fanzine interviews with the band, as well as numerous flyers from the era.

‘Shake off future, Truth is now, Shake off past, Cry for the truth’ (Cry For The Truth)

Death Side are a Tokyo hardcore band that was initially active between 1983 and 1995.  They were at the forefront of the Burning Spirits movement that emerged in Japan during that period.  This connection has proven so powerful that their own name has become shorthand for the blending of harsh vocals and surging hardcore punk rhythms with soaring NWOBHM inspired leads and a notable sense of triumphant melodicism that defines that sound.

This reissue brings together all of Death Side’s non-LP output into a 40-track compilation.  It spans the band’s three 7-inch releases – 1988’s Satisfy The Instinct together with 1994’s The Will Never Die and All Is Here Now – and their 1993 split LP with Chaos UK, plus their multiple multi-track compilation contributions released between 1988 and 1991.  It vividly captures the band’s evolution from their rawest early iterations to their more muscular later expressions.

This project has clearly been a labour of love for La Vida Es Un Mus and includes a beautifully designed lyric booklet that is crammed with flyers, live photos, and artwork from the original releases.  Death Side members went on to play in Paintbox, Forward, and Judgement, before reforming for occasional live performances in 2015.  This reissue is dedicated to the band’s original guitarist, Chelsea, who died in 2007.

‘Sing a song of violence and listen for the sound, Of all the little soldiers start to come around, Start it with a rumour, a whisper in an ear, Suspicion don’t take very long before it turns to fear’ (Fear)

Zounds were initially active between 1977 and 1982 and were at the forefront of the UK’s nascent anarcho-punk community.  The Reading band released a solitary album, 1981’s Curse Of The Zounds, together with five 7-inch EPs during this period.  It is these EPs that have been collated together for this reissue.

The trio’s debut release was the three-track 7-inch after which the compilation is named.  Released in 1980, it represents what we would think of as being the classic anarcho-punk sound of this era – nasally, rasping vocals, bright, almost jangle adjacent guitar, and a loosely fluid rhythm section.  The fiercely agitated yet beguilingly melodic Subvert is a particular stand out.

From that point on, their repertoire takes many an unexpected stylistic turn, speaking vividly to the restless inventiveness that characterised this emerging scene.  It sweeps from the darkly tense, post-punk inclinations of 1981’s Demystification and 1982’s Dancing, to the more indie-pop sensibilities of More Trouble Coming Every Day in the same year.  The closing tracks come from the band’s final 7-inch, La Vache Qui Rit, which was also released in 1982 and saw the band return to a more raucously combative mode.

The album explores themes of war, social conflict, colonial legacies, and the power of collectivism, the lyrics typically steering clear of sloganeering in favour of more allusively layered constructions.  This is the second pressing of the reissue that Sealed Records first released in 2019.  As always, Sealed have pulled things together with a sensitive hand – the recording quality is excellent and the packaging neatly reimagines the aesthetics of the original releases.

‘Your cost of living has a price of human suffering, Your quality of life is paid for with human misery…The empire declines, the system’s a failure, you need someone to blame’ (Punishment)

Having cut their teeth on two bruising EPs, 2023’s World Of Hate and last year’s Time To Die, Portland’s Alienator return with a debut full-length that is as utterly uncompromising as you would expect.  Pit provoking breakdowns, piercing divebombs, squalling solos, and muscular group vocals are all fused together into a fierce, barrelling battery that neither seeks nor offers even a hint of mercy.

The highlights come thick and fast from the pulverising climax to the opener, Alienator, to the stomping groove of What’s Inside, by way of the surging riff that defines the title track.  Meanwhile, the gutturally roared vocals continue to focus on the seething hatred that the state of the world induces.  This rage steers clear of outright nihilism and is alert to not being sucked into a self-destructive spiral.  Rather it is framed as a positive force to be harnessed – only by recognising a system that entrenches privilege and scapegoats the disadvantaged can we confront and disrupt it.

‘Movements cooped, Designed to go flat, Our dreams exploited, Hope turns to a trap, Sustain a movement, Against all odds, Can’t make it last, No matter what the cost’ (Mara Baad Mara مرة باد مرة / Time After Time)

Ehteram إحترام (Respect) is the debut 7-inch from New York’s Pure Terror.  Drawn from the city’s pan-Arab diaspora, the band call on the poetry of June Jordan, Nizar Quabbani, and Samih al-Qasim.  In the accompanying booklet, their poems sit alongside the band’s lyrics and their themes of cultural identity and anti-colonialism frame the band’s own searing exploration of both the horror unfolding in Gaza and the lived experience of Arab émigrés to the US, as well as, more broadly, the challenges of sustaining political activism in our ever more atomised society

These concerns fuel an utterly visceral onslaught that melds stripped back, metallic tinged hardcore with pacing dynamics and semi-shouted vocals that draw more on anarcho-punk inspirations.  Side One kicks off with the seething Accused Of Terror with its fierce spoken word climax and the absolute martial fury of Mara Baad Mara مرة باد مرة, before the groove laden No Compromise and the furious Majnoon مجنون (Insane) bring proceedings to a crushing climax on the flip side.

‘Another distraction, Carrot on a stick, Need for attention, Just a piece of meat, Get what they want, Take Everything, Automatic compulsion, Puppet on a string’ (Human Meme)

There is, perhaps, no more self-destructive notion than that of the attention economy.  Yes, it seeks to grab attention, but by fracturing the thought processes of those it seeks to lure.  Scroll.  Swipe.  Hours disappear in a fog of the inconsequential and soon forgotten.  The ability to concentrate and focus becomes ever more fragmented, it is easier to plunge back down the rabbit hole.

Portland’s Retirement return with their second full-length and follow-up to 2023’s Buyer’s Remorse.  The waves of abrasively distorted guitar create a darkly menacing atmosphere, the rhythm section cutting through with a satisfying punch as the band surge between nastily fast eruptions and malevolent mid-paced stomps.  The aural manifestation of our disintegrating minds that is vividly captured on the rhythmically punishing Blind and the spitefully ominous Suffer The Law.

Meanwhile, the just shy of blackened vocals deconstruct the surveillance capitalism that defines our lives on Human Meme and Sell Me Something.  They also tackle the false equivalencies, double-speak, and moral distortions that enable people to seemingly be comfortable justifying war crimes and military aggressions on All Guilty and What We Deserve.  The album closes on the bleakly nihilistic Next Time – there is no hope for a society mired in exploitation and feeding greedily on isolation.

Two stalwart bands of Olympia hardcore, combine to unleash a split LP of contrasting styles unified by the uniform excellence of the venomous delivery.

The most successful split releases often draw on a shared musical inspiration and ideological outlook driving the participating bands.  The origins of this album are, perhaps, a touch more organic, being born instead of hometown friendship.  And the result is an album that sees two bands at the peak of their respective and quite distinct powers, trading five barnstorming tracks apiece.

‘A portrait of the mother of God, Looks down at me, Bleached from years in the heat and sun, It’s just debris’ (Barbed Wire Fences / Electric Chair)

Electric Chair open in surprisingly expansive form with the mid-paced swing of Weed The Rat Out, before firing off four utterly furious hallmark hardcore punk eruptions.  he vocals are as infectiously raw as ever, but notably cleaner than those that characterised their 2022 full-length, Act Of Aggression, and fiercely lock-in with the swaggering rhythm section.  Meanwhile, the guitar leads forge a more prominent role as they career from dissonant squalls to rapid fire melodic volleys.  This blend is, perhaps, particularly potent on the rollicking Barbed Wire Fences.

‘I will find my own strength, Refuse to accept this reality, The power in myself will remain, The path I walk is mine to create’ (Refuse / Physique)

In contrast, Physique deal in noise-infused d-beat of the most discordant kind and are back in action, having released both the Again full-length and Overcome By Pain EP in 2023.  In the wrong hands, this style can feel a rather overly formalised homage, but Physique have always proved highly adept at refining their sound in a way that honours their inspirations, while adding their own brutally distinctive dimensions to it.  On this EP, they dial down their trademark near white noise distortion just enough to allow their riffage to take a more solid form.  Amid the desperation drenched vocals, crashing cymbals, and flaring solos, this injects their apocalyptic onslaught with an even bleaker intensity, most notably on my personal highlight, the slab-like belligerence of Drowning In Debt.

‘Drudgery on the daily, Empty heads at work, No sun to shine, No moon to shadow, Hours of excruciation, Clock points to death’ (Drudgery)

Hailing from Halifax, Nova Scotia and Sewn Into Confusion is their second 7-inch EP, following 2023’s Overthrow.  Featuring Ben Radford of fellow Nova Scotians, Mutated Void, they share the same frenzied raw punk energies but refashion them through a more avowedly Japanese crasher crust lens.

The guitars are blown out, cavernously distorted, but not to the point that the riffs entirely lose their shape.  There can be barely a second where a drum is not being battered and a cymbal being crashed – the fills are utterly unhinged throughout.

Each of the five tracks is almost overwhelming in its intensity, before slamming to a brick wall finish.  Savagely raw vocals desolately evoke a world of manipulation and extraction amid the unrelenting barrage, with the bludgeoning closer Laughing Torture, perhaps, the highlight.

‘Living life like stagnant water, Scared of making waves, You chose this life, You chose to stay’ (Everyone Wants Something)

Hailing from Leeds, Mother Nature’s line-up features a veritable who’s who of that city’s fine hardcore lineage, including as it does members of Perspex Flesh, The Flex, Mob Rules, and Whipping Post.  As such, expectations for this latest incarnation were running high, and were peaked still further by some searing live performances.  I’m delighted to say that Loving, Joyful And Free comfortably exceeds even those high hopes.

Tautly discordant guitar, laced with an enticingly off-kilter twang, are underpinned by a rhythm section that locks into a notably burly bounce – in particular, there is an array of utterly killer bass lines that ensure a gratifying swagger to proceedings.  As the tension between the serpentine and the stomp escalates, the guttural, rhythmically barked vocals barrel into the mix and bind them into a force of utter sledgehammer velocity.

It’s fair to say that the album’s title belies an unsettling, agitated energy that manifests itself in lyrical themes that are suffused in equal measure with anxious exhaustion and an unyielding resolve to protect a sense of self amid life’s carnage.  Each of the six tracks is a banger with personal highlights being the swirling frenzy of An Infinite Sphere and the bleakly infectious closer, Everyone Wants Something.

‘Vivir es resistir, pero vivir conscientemente, No creo en el castigo pero sí en las consecuencías’ (Un Suspiro De Silencio) / ‘To live is to resist, but to live consciously. I do not believe in punishment, but I do believe in consequences’ (A Sigh Of Silence)

Lo Que Extrañas Ya No Existe (What You Miss No Longer Exists), is a notion that you face almost perpetually as you move through life.  The places that you felt at home, the communities that inspired you, the ideas that excited you, morph, dilute, distort.  The apparent replacements that emerge too often feel like pale imitations – shallow, less real, impure.

This is the second full-length from Lame – who feature members of Barcelona, Morreadoras, and Orden Mundial – and the follow up to 2023’s Dejad Que Vengan (Let Them Come).  Fuzzed guitars and a propulsively supple rhythm section provide the perfect partners to an utterly rampant vocal performance.  Vocalist Sally unleashes a rhythmically snarled tirade that bristles and spits with fury, that demands clear-eyed confrontation.

In intriguing contrast to this utterly venomous delivery, the lyrics much more closely reflect the introspection of the title.  They draw on the work of poets Alejandra Pizarnik and Cristobal Ortiz to conjure contemplations on the true meaning of justice and the importance of action in a world that is immersed in violence both against humanity and the planet itself.

As the album breathlessly sweeps from the seething opener Te Traigo Una Bomba Mi Amor (I Bring You A Bomb My Love), by way of the pneumatic velocity of Las Palabras, La Sangre, La Memoria (The Words, The Blood, The Memory), to the savagely escalating finale to Hasta Mañana Vida Mía (See You Tomorrow, My Life) the intensity is as embracing as it is unforgiving.  What we miss may no longer exist, but Lame forcefully remind us that it is only by pushing ourselves to adapt and change that we can realise those same values in new forms.  That is our resistance.

‘Will this rolling tide crash over me again? Am I helping? I can’t seem to find, Never reaching the surface in time, But in the bleak light of day, We will be far from here’ (The Surface)

The resonant bass and the shimmering, almost strummed rhythm guitar cautiously stalk one another.  The catchily propulsive drums snap into action, an infectiously crystalline lead surges.  Gothically drawled, baritone vocals swell into view, bombast seduced by sorrow.  Further heft is leant by slabs of glacial synth as the soaring chorus detonates.  Each element is adroitly layered as the track builds to a fiercely cathartic crescendo.  The Face That I Stood Behind is, perhaps, the perfect introduction to the bleakly evocative world of Body Maintenance.

Post-punk has come to be something of a promiscuous term.  However, the Melbourne band readily elicit thoughts of the pioneering bands of early 1980s’ England.  Yet these are thoughts also suffused with the reanimating vigour of the band’s own singular, darkly contemporary take on this their second full-length, and follow-up to 2023’s Beside You.  As a forlorn atmosphere of swirling ambiguity and dissolving hope is poignantly evoked, highlights follow in quick succession from the hazily dreamy ‘Far from here’ backing of vocals of The Surface to the contagiously driving melody that defines Symphony Of Bliss, before the assertive close of The Golden Fire.

‘Building a shell, worn out!  Fight! Compromise! A wireless passion without the hidden cost, Take it from them so that we may richly live again’ (Compromise!)

Me Lost Me is the DIY folk project of Jayne Dent and her most recent album, RPG, was an intriguing electro-folk exploration of the increasingly blurred lines between the virtual and the actual.  On this, her follow-up and fourth full-length, This Material Moment, she has retained the fundamentals that shaped RPG but realised them with an even more assured boldness.

Dent’s powerful vocals, graced with their distinctive North East cadence, remain at the heart of proceedings, sweeping from the haunting ethereal to the stridently melodic with a seamless ease.  Indeed, the unaccompanied Vanishing Point is a mournfully arresting highlight.  The impact of her vocals is elevated still further by their deft layering with those of her co-conspirators.  This is, perhaps, most evident on the acapella of A Souvenir, but is braided throughout the album and works particularly vividly on the stirring eruption of Compromise!

The instrumentation is rich yet subtly understated.  Dent’s own glitching electronics are laced through the haunting arrangements of clarinet, double bass, and percussion.  This restraint creates an atmosphere that is equally imbued with reflection and drama, not least when the band’s full power is unleashed, as on the thumping Ancient Summer.  This oscillating pattern is mirrored in the fractured, allusive lyrics as they draw on natural imagery and our sensory experiences to explore how we can stay true to ourselves in a world that seeks to absorb us all into its relentlessly draining, ever less satisfying cycle of extraction.

‘Now just a mark on cold, porcelain. Seeping through the grout, underneath the tile, the history of suffering won’t come out. Come closer. Come and see death’ (Hospital Tile)

When I caught Iron Lung live back in June, they were in utterly uncompromising form.  Power violence can appear a misleadingly straightforward business at times – sludge mired riffage here, blast beat eruption there.  But when you see it in the hands of such accomplished performers, this misconception is swiftly shed as they ruthlessly render it down to its very essence.

The duo, who have been honing this sonic brutality for over twenty years, are now back with their fourth full-length, and first since 2013’s White Glove Test.  And Adapting // Crawling delivers everything you could hope for from an Iron Lung release.  The lurking danger with any power violence album, no matter how well realised, is that it can unwittingly merge in on itself.  However, Iron Lung again prove supremely adept at investing each track with its own clear identity and injecting their onslaught with a sense of space that amplifies the wider stop-start ferocity.

Conceptually, the poetically roared vocals grapple with both notions of mortality and more directly experiences of the US healthcare system, which is one seemingly shaped rather more by motives of profit than of clinical care, or even basic humanity.  Personal stand outs are the bleakly savage A Veiled Eye, the industrial fury of Virus, and the desperation drenched Hospital Tile.

‘Promise freedom, prey on weakness, capture language, snap your fingers, prey on weakness, lay in grass, lust for ignorance’ (Figament Of Reality)

As screamo has evolved, it has become ever more expansive, broadening its palette from the unhinged velocity of its roots.  This is a trend that Los Angeles’ Nuvolascura continue to largely eschew on this, their third album and follow-up to 2020’s As We Suffer From Memory And Imagination.  This is not to imply a lack of invention or a monochrome cadence.  Amid the whiplash changes in pace, there are flourishes of haunting melody, flares of dissonant electronics, fleeting moments of reflection, but they are so deftly absorbed into the band’s remorseless battery that they feel utterly organic to their sound.

The writhing, twisting compositions intuitively unfurl so as to feel almost improvisational in conception, yet their visceral intensity speaks to a sound that has been honed to its leanest expression, any extravagance mercilessly exorcised.  Taut leads skitter.  Slabs of muscular riffage erupt.  Songs dissolve and reassert themselves with discordant abandon, while the limber rhythm section morphs without hesitation to match these ceaseless contortions.  Figament Of Reality and Cordiform Projection vividly embody these seething oscillations.

The raw, harrowing vocals conjure up a fractured, bleakly allusive stream of consciousness.  They grapple with both the constant battle to escape the chains of depression and addiction together with more directly political expressions.  The latter draw on an anarchist framing to explore themes of community organisation and the power of collective resistance.

‘Stiamo entrando nella regione della notte infinita, Stiamo entrando nella regione della notte infinita’ (Nella Regione Della Notte Infinita) / ‘We are entering the region of endless night, We are entering the region of night infinite’ (In The Region Of Infinite Night)

Festa Del Perdono (Feast Of Forgiveness) have been born from the fulcrum of a myriad of Italian hardcore projects, including Kalashnikov, Ceremonia Secreta, and Spirito Di Lupo.  The band’s debut EP from last year, Società Mentale, was a thoroughly intriguing release, melding together a mesmerising blend of anarcho-punk and dub, braided through with flaring organs and brass flourishes.

The band are now back with Galactic Jazz Night Part I: Nella Regione Della Notte Infinita, the first of two interconnected 7-inch EPs exploring the theme of shadow worlds.  Proceedings are opened by Galactic Jazz Night Part I, which marries languidly haunting brass with hypnotically ethereal spoken word, before feeding into a fiercely confrontational cover of Combattere (Fight), originally released by Ceremonia Secreta.

The flip side sees Nella Regione Della Notte Infinita fuse contrasting aspects of these opening two tracks into a languorously unfurling track as rhythmically infectious spoken word and dub fuelled instrumentation are pushed to the fore.  Part two, L’Arca Dei Nuovi Maestri (The Ark Of The New Masters), will follow in the autumn.

‘What has this city become? It seems that everything that makes sense has gone…Chained by the ankle to some envisioned comfort’ (Circus)

Hailing from Nantes, Precipice’s debut album, Down The Well, is a fierce slab of urgently claustrophobic, deeply discomfiting hardcore.  The leanly abrasive guitars are laced through with flares of dissonant melody and eerily off-kilter leads, while underpinned by spryly punchy bass lines and burly, uncompromising drumming.

Meanwhile, the desperation-soaked vocals are steeped in a bleak cocktail that is equal parts revulsion and anxious exhaustion.  This is a desolation provoked by the commoditisation, often with our complicity, of our lives and cities to serve the interests of capital and technology.

As the album’s relentlessly agitated patterns emerge, shadows of early 1980s’ pioneers such as Die Kreuzen and Mecht Mensch are evoked, as well as those of more contemporary exponents such as Permission.  The unsettling atmosphere is, perhaps, best captured by the serpentine discordance of Maze Spectacle and the ferocious contortions of Disguised.

‘Insubordinados en un mundo decadente, Hurtan nuestros sueldos honorables presidents, Ningún sistema podrá silenciarnos, Cambian de verdugo, seguiremos protestando’ (Anti-Poder) / ‘Insubordinates in a decadent world, They steal our salaries, honorable presidents, No system can silence us, They change the executioner, we will continue protesting’ (Anti-Power)

Extermaninación (Extermination) is Lumpen’s second 7-inch and follow-up to their excellent 2022 debut full-length, Corrupción (Corruption).  The Barcelona-based band, featuring primarily members hailing from Colombia, continue to hone the kernel of their sound drawing on UK82 inspirations, but then feed these through the bleakly abrasive lens of Latin American hardcore.

What emerges is a densely layered, darkly urgent onslaught.  An overriding sense of raw intensity is the initial reaction. But as you immerse yourself in the five tracks, a rich detailing reveals itself from the flaring melodic solo of Desplazados (Displaced) to the martial stomp that opens Finnira Mai? (Will It Ever End?), by way of the anarcho-punk tinged Apatia De La Raza Humana (Apathy Of The Human Race).  Meanwhile, the despair shredded vocals are a rallying cry to resist the militarised and economic violence of those in power.

‘Helpless peoples desperate cries, The void stares back, From lifeless eyes, Crucifixion of the masses’ (Crucifixion Of The Masses)

Having released a couple of cassette-only demos in 2018/19, Fuckin’ Lovers now unleash their debut 7-inch, Crucifixion Of The Masses.  It is fair to say that the Philadelphia trio, who feature members of Allergy, Flower, and ICD10, have dialled down the intensity not one jot.  This is noise punk in its most discordant, unvarnished form.

The guitar is utterly drenched in distortion that floods over the primitive, cymbal awash drums, and the equally filthily distorted bass in a torrent that is just shy of white noise.  Meanwhile, barked, duelling vocals are chaotically layered in their rage against a society rooted in economic inequality and systemic violence against the marginalised.  The rhythmic fury of Arrogance and the swirling, more metallic inclined instrumental closer, The End, are particular highlights.