‘Remember always know your place, And you must never win the race, Keep yourself clouded in confusion, Keep buying into the illusion of choice’ (Hierarchy)

Where The Dregs Dwell is the debut album from Crazy Clue.  They are an Anglo-Canadian collaboration featuring Bobby Cole (Pleasure, Total Con) alongside two parts of Fucked Up, Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk.  This is 1980s’ inspired hardcore that draws with equal relish from both the US and Scandinavian traditions.

Cole and Falco deliver exactly what you would hope and expect with vicious intent.  The former spits and snarls his vocals as he lyrically deconstructs a society enslaved to the self-serving, all enveloping logic of the free market.  Meanwhile, Falco delivers a pummelling rhythmic battery that is relentlessly unforgiving.  Haliechuk’s blistering riffage is equally compelling and that alone would be enough to deliver the invigorating statement intended.

But it is arguably the dissonant melodicism that Haliechuk laces through the onslaught, which introduces an enticingly unexpected dimension.  The discordantly fuzzed chimes prime the frenetic opener, Social Pressure, then flare like a demonic organ during Slavedriver, before fuelling the searingly unhinged Ambivalence and infusing Control with a squalling psychedelia.  There is a slight change a gear for the finale with Broken Spirit, a raucously anthemic call to shed lethargic despondency and to fight back.