‘They sneer with disgust, we hang in their nooses they lined with poisoned threads, trapped in their manmade hell so they can be gods’ (Manmade Hell)

Now this is an intense one.  From the absolutely blistering opener Starving Dogs, this debut four-track EP from Axon hits home with an almost overwhelming force.  Yet, as you immerse yourself in its seemingly remorseless ferocity, it also reveals a satisfyingly rich level of detailing.  Drawing on members of multiple East Coast bands – including Bato, Mutant Strain, Reckoning Force, and Thought Control – Axon take a Japanese hardcore base and force it through the viciously distorting lens of these more avowedly US influenced projects.

This spawns a brutal hybrid that refuses to settle into the archetypal Burning Spirits groove, preferring instead to propel the powerful riffage forward at a truly frenetic speed, the savagely intricate rhythms only relenting for the bulldozer breakdown of Industry and the scorching solos of Separate and Manmade Hell.  The fiendishly feral vocals, meanwhile, excoriate the ‘cult of capital’ that saturates every aspect of our lives, cultivating a delusional, all enveloping dogma that distorts and commoditises society to serve its insatiable demands.