‘Who’s to blame? No one but myself, I’m burning in this private hell, Fall to my knees, Faced with defeat, A slave to this feeling, I’ll never be free’ (State of Regression)

When starting up a distro, one of the disciplines you soon teach yourself is to focus on newer releases rather than being lured into older ones, even if you absolutely loved them.  I rather broke that rule when I couldn’t resist picking up Constructing A War Against You, the 2022 debut vinyl release from San Jose’s Field Of Flames.  But trust me, this is a rather fine slab of metallic hardcore.

The album is a compilation of the same-titled 2022 EP on side A with 2021’s cassette-only Remnants Of A Collapsed Existence on the flipside.  As the menacing opening riff to The Decision builds, you sense that things are going to get very intense indeed.  What follows is as unrelenting as it is thoroughly well-crafted – raw, impassioned vocals and darkly sinister metallic riffage interlaced with swells of bleakly melancholic melody and passages of ominous spoken word.

Echoes of the early 1990’s pioneers of the genre, such as Undertow and Unbroken (the album actually closes with a fierce cover of the latter’s Blanket), are elicited but clearly stamped with Field Of Flames’ own very distinctive take.  Personal highlights are, perhaps, the searing Besiege, and the brutally ferocious Burn Your World.  You can quite literally feel the stage divers whistling over your head.