‘You crave a restricted life where freedom fades and dies, Your body and mind you’ll submit, We nurse the wounds that we inflict’ (The Cult Of Oblivion)

Apocalypse Hits is Trenchkoat’s follow-up to their 2023 debut full-length, Pulling The Plug On Humanity.  As it unfolds, you are hit by two contrasting feelings – one is a pleasing immediacy, and the other a nagging sense of disorientation arising from a sonic balance that defies simple categorisation.  The starting point of the band’s sound is relatively straight-up hardcore punk, but they have warped these fundamentals into something quite distinct.

The rhythm guitar sits surprisingly low in the mix, the blackened vocals notably higher.  Bleakly ominous melodies feed into spiralling NWOBHM stamped solos.  The rhythm section has a punchy elasticity to it, yet there is also a primitive element to the drums that at times calls back to proto-thrash metal.  The venomous opener The Cult Of Oblivion, the swaggering bass-led Doctrine Of Discipline, and the frantic oscillations of Mistaken Identity, perhaps, best capture these competing dynamics.

So, a pretty unique proposition then, but it is one that Trenchkoat, whose members are based in London and Freiburg, are delivering with ever greater confidence.  Arguably, the vocal delivery is the binding glue.  Blackened vocals can often prove rather monotone, but Marco Palumbo (also of Iris Paralysis and Zuletzt) injects his with both a rhythmic intensity and an arresting sense of dark theatre.  It is not too hard to imagine the skull-faced character from the cover art behind the microphone as the disconsolate lyrics map an atomised society drained of hope and easy prey for predatory capital and political manipulation.