‘Divisive streets turn into division highways, No way through, Build a bridge, Build a wall, This is what it’s come to’ (Division Street)

26 songs in 25 minutes.  And each one of them hits home with the velocity of a runaway train.  Given the scaffolding of downtuned riffs and blast beat eruptions, it would be easy to reach for a powerviolence descriptor.  Yet, the fluid morphing of the song structures is closer to the more organic dexterity of early Napalm Death.  Then other, less expected, influences begin to seize your attention.

Nods to 1980s’ USHC certainly, but the more prevalent influence is the metallic inclined hardcore of the mid to late 1990s – flares and flashes of Endeavor, 108, and All Out War all barge into view.  As I dug into the band’s background, the origins of this thoroughly distinctive blend began to emerge.  Burned Up, Bled Dry were first active themselves during the latter part of that decade, releasing a trio of EPs between 1996 and 2006.  With all of the members now living back in Fort Smith, Arkansas, the opportunity to resurrect the band after a nearly two-decade hiatus proved irresistible.

The onslaught is a touch cleaner than might be anticipated, but this in no way dilutes the sledgehammer intensity and helps lend a striking clarity to each track.  The band’s deft handling of pacing – see the bludgeoning mid-paced dissonance of Don’t Care – further amplifies the album’s flow.  The highlights slam home with a fierce regularity.  The utterly venomous climatic breakdown to Drawing Board (I love the moment where the double bass drum fleeting kicks in).  The rhythmic, melodic fringed swagger of Not This Time.  The unhinged, discordant angularity of Translucent Mask.  The spiralling, Entombed leaning riffage of Unseen Warfare. The punishing grooves of Future Of Intangibles.

The vocals are rooted in a rasping, classic hardcore cadence and the tautness of the song structures is mirrored by the lyrical directness as they deconstruct a society that is not only eating itself but remorselessly punching down on those already most marginalised as it does so.  Next Stop…Dead Stop… is hardcore at its most instinctual, untamed and unfettered.