Soma Coma - Dust 12"

Sickened animalistic hardcore from Australia, frenzied and spewing bestial vitriol among thunderous beats, an unleashed creature of demonic hiccups and burps, inhuman acidspray growls, the guitar holding remnants of melody and stretched out like a pickled skin.

Ayak, Akai taking its name from the secret KKK codes, (Are You a Klansman? A Klansman Am I, bigots can't complicate things too much) a gnashing vision of vile cultic bullshit, hate hidden, secret decadences and rituals lurking behind respectability. "DISGUSTING PAST AND PRESENT OF HIGHLY EVOLVED MANKIND." This record is outraged by the world, its cruelty and coldness, its malicious acts. Area Boys is about the Igbo genocide of the 1960s, evil curling guitar lines, a stumbling into a thrashing panic as it digs into the monstrous specifics of violence as well as drawing broad strokes of frustration and beaten-in pain in songs like Gimme Soma and Never Again, thought and freewill excised slowly by the day.

Working in blunt declarations of anguish ("GOTTA RAM MY HEAD THROUGH THE WALL") and brutal bitter ironies, Imperial Dick's "TEACH ME CIVILISATION! TEACH ME MOTIVATION!", the title track's "SHIELD YOUR EYES/AS PEACE FALLS FROM THE SKY" before that constant fury rips itself apart, slowing and faltering, the ripping precision and consuming screams melting into themselves, warped and unsustainable. "IT TURNS TO DUST..."

Tropical Nightmare - demo CS

Throbbing psychedelic hardcore from Brazil by way of London at their best on tracks like O Prazer De ser Asceta when they strike a dirty vein of punk grooverush, the bass upfront and packed with crustgrit, the vocals dry barks of rage, the guitar cut free dancing flickersharp and wild over the top like a spirit of trickster noise. The whole compelling drive dragged out of the empty ambient wastes that open Prego Na Areia, busy and loaded with fleeting images of pain, moral rebellion, apocalyptic cities, uncomfortable headspaces. Tropical Nightmare move like the snared ghost of the pulsing rhythms of anger rippling out of you.

Blazing Eye - s/t 7"

Killer LA hardcore punk, mutilated and GISM-throated snarlings, darkpunk undertones, noise an insistent presence but held at bay, dragged behind by the reckless pounding, the violent chopping riffs, the rash fraying solos. Reaping that brutish Japanese hardcore rush of the likes of Zouo's The Final Agony, LSD's Jast Last and The Execute, who might've caught hardcore more perfectly in two words than anyone else before or since with their Blunt Sleazy EP. Blunt. Sleazy. "I WILL KILL YOU" blasts Kill You and you believe.

Dawn of Humans - Slurping at the Cosmos Spine LP

Another NY-beat monster squirming its way out of the Nuke York depths, long possessed of a transcendent liveshow, Dawn of Humans, transfer that energy to their first full length. Scuzzy guitar dragged over pogothump rhythms runs Slurping at the Cosmos Spine, strapped up equally ready for an imbecilic slamdance or fresh aperture gouged into your third-eye. The vocals are the most divergent instrument here, snapping lizardbrain warbling and strained whinnies, inane whirling ditties with the cadence of playground taunts, deep dogbitten threats, panicked jolts and spasms. There's the tapewhine and flickering spitshake of Possibility Box, the rattling of Secretion, the fleshy vellication of Painful Mountain, the restless clamor of Dug Hole, the pumpfake slobbering dronedrawl of Horseblind, slipping down into dark. All the way through to the pressing freakstamp of Foundation, Dawn of Humans snatch songs from fragments and shards.

Gnomic visions of a world in flux, half-glimpsed through a mucal veil. Oblique gerunds trailing off, "As we stand on firm ground, we sink in, callousing" on Horseblind, Fixation's repetitive sneer of "Always bending", Dug Hole "Creeping, seeping, crawling", Possibility Box "Knowing, not knowing". Dawn of Humans trick out the scribbly essence of thought, coalescing and tearing, tumbling off into the ether. It's a world of traps and terrors, fears lurking beyond or within, their clammy tendrils brushing against up against you as you surge bodily and stumblemosh in the gloom. Jump-up music for aborted seances, busted headcult punks in primordial movement, dancemoves and directions sucked greedily straight from the collective unconsciousness of the puerile choir immaterial.

Rixe - Coups Et Blessures 7"

A release that's seemingly been greeted with as much surprise as it has acclaim, Oi! having painted itself into a particularly narrow corner of punk rock's sprawling family tree, the prospect of a modern Oi! record that appeals to those beyond the sort of people who would willingly listen to the Gonads (the worst band of all time? probably, yes, the worst band of all time) doesn't come along that often. More recently New York's Vanity and London's Crown Court have been some of the few bands that eschew the parochial oldbloke mutterings and mouthings, to escape the especially harsh Sturgeoning tendencies of bands formed by people hanging on a bit too tight to Shock Troops or Voice of a Generation.

Add to them this crunching French stomper that similarly avoids the smoothed-and-sanded banality that characterises a lot of modern tilts at that subgenre. Inevitably invoking comparisons to the classics of French Oi!, the more straight-down-the-line Camera Silens songs, the whirring bite of L'Infanterie Sauvage demos, it's also got more than a touch of Nabat's roughed-up Skins E Punks attitude in its commanding drive, but its tone is all its own, a thick, muddied and fuzzed depth that powers its stocky collection of shoutalongs. Four grubrock fightstarters with choruses to get stuck into even if your schooldays French is a wispy disjointed memory of random nouns and half-declensed verbs floating grammarless in the more motheaten corners of your head, no matter how much (or how little) hair it may sport.