‘Hope is a weakness, Morbid fascination, Hold on to nothing, It never ends, The crushing weight, Of nothing new, Will you let it, Destroy you?’ (Speck Of Dust)

As the sarcasm saturated title implies, this is not an album that revels in Endless Joy but rather one founded in perpetual despair.  Reuniting three members of early noughties outfit Cold Sweat, who went on to play in Iron Lung and Private Room among others, it is a viscerally bleak record.

The Seattle band forge a brutal blend of blast beat fury, infectious grooves, and sludge-fuelled intensity.  They deftly ratchet the tension, marshalling these elements into a dozen sixty second eruptions, never allowing the barbarous velocity to collapse in on itself.  Indeed, it is those moments when the pace is slowed, and the lumbering menace given full rein, that they are at their most crushing.

Meanwhile, the rasping, semi-shouted vocals revel in a nihilistic contempt for the corroding forces of militarisation and religion within a society locked into a relentlessly downward spiral.  The highlights come thick and fast from the seething Burial Flag and the rhythmic swagger of Fools For Christ, before the positively swinging The Future Is Now and the cathartic finale of Another World.