‘What has this city become? It seems that everything that makes sense has gone…Chained by the ankle to some envisioned comfort’ (Circus)

Hailing from Nantes, Precipice’s debut album, Down The Well, is a fierce slab of urgently claustrophobic, deeply discomfiting hardcore.  The leanly abrasive guitars are laced through with flares of dissonant melody and eerily off-kilter leads, while underpinned by spryly punchy bass lines and burly, uncompromising drumming.

Meanwhile, the desperation-soaked vocals are steeped in a bleak cocktail that is equal parts revulsion and anxious exhaustion.  This is a desolation provoked by the commoditisation, often with our complicity, of our lives and cities to serve the interests of capital and technology.

As the album’s relentlessly agitated patterns emerge, shadows of early 1980s’ pioneers such as Die Kreuzen and Mecht Mensch are evoked, as well as those of more contemporary exponents such as Permission.  The unsettling atmosphere is, perhaps, best captured by the serpentine discordance of Maze Spectacle and the ferocious contortions of Disguised.