Hailing from New Jersey and Los Angeles respectively, Massa Nera and Quiet Fear have worked collaboratively to shape a split LP – Quatro Vientos // Cincos Soles (Four Winds // Five Suns) – that sees both bands further hone their distinctive, yet intrinsically interconnected, take on DIY fuelled emotional hardcore.

Each band contributes an initial three songs that appear alternately, yielding a compelling organic tension between their respective offerings.  Massa Nera kick off proceedings and theirs is a sound that takes its initial inspiration from 1990s’ screamo, skilfully melding eruptions of discordant fury with passages of eerie beauty.  Quiet Fear’s primarily Spanish-language compositions share a similar base starting point, but they infuse it with a more urgently aggressive hardcore dynamic.

Lyrically, both band’s share similar preoccupations, reflecting on the importance of community resilience to resist the atomising effects of capitalism.  Massa Nera’s contributions exhibit a distinctly introspective flavour to illuminate the dehumanising realities of contemporary society, perhaps most vividly on I Point To The River (‘My debts are measured in the moments I waste, While the clock keeps ticking, I try to qualify each compromise as the years grow shorter, and my thoughts turn colder’).

Quiet Fear’s approach is more direct, tackling misogynistic violence on N.U.M and economic exploitation on Entre Las Manos Y El Colmillo (‘Beneath the fang of gluttony, They consume my soul, Caught in the nets of accumulated debt, Stuck by pills that only numb and give no relief’) before the raucous, rousing defiance of Presidio (‘I am a fortress, You will not siege me, I will not be torn down’).

Fittingly, the oscillating call-and-response between the two bands culminates with Nueva Llama (‘We are the language that breaks the silence of ignorance’), which is co-written and performed by both bands, and brings the album to an utterly searing crescendo.