‘Everything is burnt behind you and in front of you! Streets, cars, and mosques, There is no god left, Neither on this side of the pond, nor on the other side’ (They Decide For Us)

It is hard to imagine the conflicting emotions that must currently grip the Iranian people and the country’s wider diaspora.  Over forty years on from a stolen revolution, after four decades of brutal theocratic tyranny, it felt like the regime was finally on the verge of toppling.  Then, fuelled by their own self-serving imperatives, the US-Israeli axis blundered into the mix, deepening the bloodshed and the economic hardship, crassly calling for the Iranian people to rise up, and reinforcing the extremist grip on power, just when it seemed at its most fragile.  To want one thing in the world to end more than any other, but in any way other than this.

Corrupt / فاسد is the second 12-inch from Siyahkal, following up their steamroller of a debut, Days Of Smoke And Ash / روزای دود و خاکستر.  Anyone who had the good fortune of catching the Toronto band on their UK tour last year will already be bracing themselves.  The intensely rhythmic, semi-shouted Farsi vocals are locked in merciless synchronicity with the bludgeoning rhythm section and then braided through both with savage howls and chanted invocations.

Meanwhile, the metallic-tinged riffage flares with psychedelic smears, discordant squalls, and soaring melodic leads.  This fusion of infectiously stomping rhythms and brutally precise riffage is fiercely intoxicating from the bruising grooves of Freaky Bedbugs to the surging density of Anarchy In Iran, and then from the kick drum fuelled discordance of Time To Hunt to the venomous closer They Decide For Us.

The band take their name from a 1971 prison break that is widely viewed as the spark that ignited organised resistance to the Shah’s regime.  A resistance that ultimately overthrew an oppressive monarchy in 1979, only to itself be subverted by an equally oppressive theocracy.  Lyrically, the Iranian people’s fight to regain their freedom remains at the heart of Siyahkal’s music, fuelling a wider message of anti-authoritarianism that has never been more powerfully relevant to us all.