‘Robots have stolen your job, Sitting in front of your screen all day long, Craving for high tech useless products, Planned obsolescence that’s all they induct’ (Progress?)

Hiatus were, of course, stalwarts of the European crust scene in the early 1990s, releasing their first demo in 1989 and initially calling it a day in 1996, with two full-lengths and a slew of splits and EPs to their name.  The Liège band then re-emerged in 2023 with their first album in twenty-seven years, Out Of Hand.

Realm Of Nightmares sees them continue to forge a sound rooted in darkly propulsive, metallic-tinged crust, laced with flares of sombre melody and mournful guitar harmonies.  It is an onslaught still fuelled by a political conviction that has only been amplified by society’s current trajectory and perfectly embodied by the surging velocity of Progress? and the barrelling ferocity of Total Nightmare.

There is though one major shift in the dynamics.  The band’s vocalist, Wills, died in 2024 and this album emerges as a tribute to this life and values, the track What’s Left Behind? being specifically dedicated to his memory.  And as the roared vocals of his bandmates confront our nightmarish reality, with its suffocating web of surveillance capitalism, rising political extremism, and environmental degradation, you can’t help feeling that it is a memorial that he would have heartily approved of.