‘From the master’s deft hand, We are fed horrid remains, In the master’s tight grip, We will remain’ (Reaper)

Roanoke, Virginia’s Ex Parents are back with a new four-track EP, Failure, following on from their 2023 self-titled debut album.  The trio’s sound is one grounded in the very fundamentals of 1980s’ USHC.  And such is their rigorously tight grip on these base elements of blistering speed and raw aggression that it affords them the scope to lean into some intriguingly layered flourishes.  Meanwhile, the rasping vocals explore the damaging learned behaviours that feed our own complicity in an economic system designed to divide and atomise.

The title track kicks off proceedings in rampaging style, before Reaper fuses a martial anarcho-punk stomp with a burly group vocal finale.  The rather more loose limbed When The Hook Sets is then laced with an almost fuzzed out melodicism, before the closer Dimwit bristles with a lean garage punk intensity.  Proof, if it were needed, that no nonsense does not mean no invention.