‘Guests dig their graves, With forks and knives, Laughter turns to fighting, Just to feel alive’ (Party’s Over)

This is the debut album from Democracy and follow-up to their 2021 demo, Western Relaxation.  For recording purposes, the band comprises a duo whose roll call of projects includes Fashion Change, Innuendo, Nasti, and Necron 9.  And that pedigree gives you a pretty decent handle on what to anticipate – raw, filthy, desperately fast hardcore.

Even amid the lacerating riffs and burly rhythms, the sheer bleakness of the vocals catches you a little off guard.  A blackened spew, they drip with disgust at a society sleepwalking into ever more entrenched social oppression and climatic degradation.

The band control the dynamics of this merciless onslaught with an impressive dexterity.  The stomping antagonism of Menace To Society and the limber instrumental, Healing II, deftly offset the rabid violence of cuts such as Cold Deep Water and the title track.  Before, Primal State brings proceedings to a suitably crushing finale.