‘Everything’s getting less, But costing me more, My cash is running low, No credit anymore’ (Life In The Slow Lane)

As right-wing extremists and ideological grifters marshal huge, flag swathed crowds on to our streets with their toxic tropes that punch down on the already marginalised, it is easy to forget just how much neglect was required to create this poisonous state of affairs.  Well, some forty years of blind obedience to the free market delusion as it happens.  Plenty of time to ravage our social infrastructure, embed insecurity in people’s lives, entrench a doom loop of austerity, and incubate a fertile sense of powerlessness to be exploited.

This Is A War is the second EP from North East England’s Unified Action, and the follow up to their equally excellent self-titled debut.  The utterly bruising title track unleashes an unsparing recognition of the danger posed by people’s increasingly brazen flirtation with the politics of the far right, while the venomously staccato Life In The Slow Lane and Gatekeeper, with its monstrous slab-like finale, unpick how despair at plunging living standards has been harnessed in the seemingly ever more insidious echo chambers of misinformation.

Across the five tracks, the band ferociously reimagine their 1980s’ hardcore influences.  The onslaught is deftly constructed and studded through with flashes of savage crossover riffage and semi-blast beat eruptions.  It is an uncompromising soundtrack to a nation that is intent on sleepwalking to the precipice of the abyss.