‘Slave to all the rules, Agreed before you were born, And die with no remorse, Look, this isn’t now, You reap all of the fruit but forget to remember – where is the root?’ (Your Own Device)

Hailing from New York, and featuring members of Acid Casualties, Altar Of Eden and Mirage, Cross follow up their 2023 demo, No Beginning, No End, with their debut album, Human Spirit.  It is an utterly unforgiving statement.  This is hardcore at its most claustrophobic, tensely fraught, almost suffocating in its intensity.  The abrasively discomfiting battery sparks thoughts of a savage reimagining of Mecht Mensch and Permission, constantly threatening to overwhelm, but with the chaos always just about held at bay.

The twin guitars are frenzied, densely layered, and squirming with a restless unease as fleeting flares of melody are swallowed in the dissonance.  The rhythm section rabidly keeps pace, before swaggering passages of mid-paced groove allow it to flex and bring a powerful fluidity into play.  Intertwined throughout are the caustically barked vocals as they unleash a darkly poetical, bleakly fractured tirade that is saturated in a quiet despair at the constraints that we allow society, and ourselves, to impose on our lives.

From the crushing climatic breakdown of Envy to the squalling melodicism of Falsified Ties and then from the frenetically jarring Flowers to the whiplash agitations of Soul Divine, there is not a moment’s respite.  And you won’t be asking for one.