Gutter Gods - Innersense LP

Pulsing negative futurepunx, mechanistic hardcore chomping broken up with cyberparts, building a swirling surreality of samples, feedback sparks and guitar crunch, all encased with this kind of scummy hum. Virtual Reality squealing manically, barking rabidly as the song grumbles into life. Mind Corruption rolling slowly with the harmonica squawk of alarm blares reaching you through the din, then the feverish screech, then exploding, slowing, cracking onwards with its psychotic shifts."A SICKNESS TAKES HOLD ALL TOO OFTEN/ACCELERATING THOUGHTS/MIND CORRUPTION"

Constantly brutalised and confused, Gutter Gods attack with such relentless cynicism and antagonistic fervor as to spray its hostility on all it contacts, including itself. Hang Out burns with a rancor for all social scene shit, but as that kind of dismissive scream often is, it's matched to a stabbing self-loathing (which explodes on Rut) rather than an arrogance. And Street Walker might seem like a bleak scathing portrait of a prostitute, but it switches up between third and first person so quickly, marries itself to its target and then jumps away from that, snaps between the specific and the general, that all you're left with is just an overwhelming sense of unease and gathering despair, all thrust into your head by the thump of the hardcore.

Even the hearty Oi!-shot crew-stomper of Chosen Few oscillates between being the prototypical celebratory fist-in-face fucker-upper, and a snide, self-lacerating satirical take on that brainless violent mentality "BUNCH OF APES THROWING SHIT/WE DON'T TIRE WE DON'T QUIT/RUIN THE NIGHT FOR YOU/WHAT THE FUCK YOU GONNA DO?" Even at one point breaking down into peppy goofy handclaps, heightening the ridiculousness of that thugpunk shield-wall unity. "SPILLIN' GEAR CAUSIN' FEAR/SPILL A PUNK ROCKER'S BEER/SLAP OF REALITY ACROSS YOUR FACE/CLEAR THE POSERS OUT THE PLACE" Cos maybe even a brawl is a level of interaction that can't sit right with the forceful isolation of Community: "HUMAN NATURE/SUCK IT DRY/NO COMMUNITY/JUST ALIVE"

Allan where this all disintegrates, the purposeful noise losing that momentum, breaking apart with the strain of pessimistic totality, the energy previously corralled let loose, the constituent parts wild, damaging, unformed. Background turmoil and a rant of paranoia and nihilism, the coiled and wriggling thoughts that fester and live with mental quarantine, but this break is shouted again with such ferocity as to cut and bloody, just digging deeper as it's dragged out uncomfortably long.

As well as the uncompromising desire to push this negativity to hard blank endpoints, what makes Innersense really live is the way the album matches malevolent fury to the space-smooth sterling guitar whispertone, rocketship fuselage sheen over mucky snarls, Innersense chugs and cuts with Gutter Gods' perverse anti-faith, anti-human swivel. Hate articulated and thrown in all directions, animosity towards self and others and torn up with thunderous hardcore stomp and drive, but the psychshiver guitar that bookends Streetwalker, stabs out of Community, whips and swoops through Mind Corruption, and that constant wheedling squeal that lives to itch out of the quieter moments, take this venom into way weirder, darker, creepier places yet than simple fuck-you with a riff strapped-on.