Iron Lung: a brutal fucking nightmare of a band that leaves you screaming upon waking, fitfully checking your extremities to make sure everything’s still attached. If I lived next door to two men making this much noise I just don’t know what I’d do. Either spend too much time cowering in the cupboard under the stairs or plucking up the courage to break into their house at night and off them with a fucking clawhammer, probably. Along with just about everything else they’ve released, this is pure gold – an unrelenting wall of bile and fury that could stop a forklift truck in its tracks with the palm of one outstretched hand.
As for Shank, they don’t exactly provide the kind of leisurely warm-down you might’ve hoped for after that. Fast, brutal, nihilistic hardcore for those who don’t count on shitty days getting much better. No let up in the music and lyrically spot-on, their barrage of bitter sarcasm provides some welcome relief from empty-headed positivity and numbskull sloganeering. Needless to say it’s a damn fine note to go out on, ending both their own legacy and this record with the kind of well-placed blow to the throat that does their moniker proud.