‘Where I’m from, These wounds, Made to be numbed, We’re seasoned to die, Exiled from our own sky’ (All Heart)

SOH (System Of Hate) hail from Los Angeles and Cost To Live is their debut album, and follow-up to 2022’s 7-inch EP, Life On Edge.  The band’s sonic fundamentals remain a fierce blend of metallic crust riffage, breakneck d-beat rhythms, and a snarling punk attitude.  However, the full-length format has offered the opportunity for greater invention and it’s one that SOH have grabbed with both hands.

The key, perhaps, to this is the manically virtuoso vocals.  Rasping shouts, semi-spoken word, melodic incantations, and hellish growls can erupt in the space of a single track.  Thoughts of a hyperactive, shapeshifting demon are elicited as the oppressive forces of colonialism and religion are confronted.  The musicianship succeeds in matching this restless energy as dark melodies and surf fuelled solos are liberally laced through the wider onslaught, underpinned by spryly bouncing bass lines and an impressively relentless drummer.

The result is an album that brims with both raw intensity and agitated invention.  Its invigorating volatility rarely ends where you might anticipate as it surges from the Filipino language rage of Walang Paglaya (No Release) to the contagiously rhythmic tirade of Annihilate, by way of the raucously melodic All Heart.