‘Not here to talk, Not backing down, Indignant screams for purity, Dreaming of a world that never was, Restore tradition, Enforce division, Thrashing for progress undone’ (Never Going Back)

Milwaukee’s Innuendo make their vinyl debut in rollicking style with Peace & Love.  Taking cues from early 1980’s hardcore and injecting them with both a raucous rock’n’roll vitality and an uncompromising sincerity, they deliver a thoroughly refreshing slap to the senses.

The dirt-toned guitar is languorously delivered, mid-paced strumming and flaring blues infused solos setting the tone of raw infectious hardcore.  It is instinctually contagious without ever veering into the actively anthemic, as the rasping vocals and swaggering rhythm section lock-in with ferocious abandon.  The barrelling Just Talk and wildly escalating Stuck are personal stand outs.

Lyrically, the album grapples with a society that is looting itself in its determination to sate the demands of capital – economic exploitation (Suffer For Peace), scapegoating the already marginalised (Poison Pill), and sowing the seeds of division to distract from its own rapacious greed (Finding Death).  It closes with Never Going Back, a searing denunciation of the reactionary yearning to turn the clocks back to some rose-tinted past rather than confronting the real causes of our current malaise.