‘I am a cop for the forms that you will fill, for the lease that you take, the commission I make, I am a snitch with a line to the rich, I develop / destroy for my slice of the cake’ (Scammer)

Melbourne’s Hacker – who include members of Infinite Void, Phantasm, and Ubik among their ranks – are a band that revel in the stomp and they deliver it with a relish that is as infectious as it is bruising.  Memory Cache captures their entire discography to date, bringing together 2019’s self-titled demo, 2021’s Pick A Path 12-inch, and 2024’s Psy Wi-Fi 7-inch into a single crushing slab.

A thunderous, swaggering low end supplies the perfect footing for the slab-like riffage as the band barrel from mid-paced groove to mayhem inducing breakdowns with an irresistible compulsion. Front and centre of the barrage are the rasping, growled vocals.  Bristling with a rhythmic hostility, they confront themes of parasitical rentier capitalism, the exploitative reality of the gig economy, and a dystopian future born of rapacious natural resource extraction.

The 15 tracks are reordered and blended to maximise their impact as a single album.  Yet, from the lurching savagery of Algorithim to the pneumatic fury of Deliverator, by way of the utterly seething Scammer, sight is also never lost of the band’s undoubted progression since the raw intent of that first demo.