Been staring into this one for quite some time now, trying to figure it out. In broad, base terms it’s pretty simple: a fast, ripping, egregiously pissed off hardcore record. We all have plenty of those, right? Indeed we do. But not ones like this, and I think that’s the thing. Amid the primal surge and even more primal stomps there’s an unhinged offness that really sets C.H.E.W. apart – the whipcrack dynamics, Neolithic lunges and unnatural discords crowd around the larynx-ruining vocals with a strange kind of sneering joy, and I’m minded of bands like Battalion Of Saints, Tar Babies, Born Against and Heroin even though C.H.E.W. don’t necessarily sound like any of ’em. It makes for a startling, difficult, genuinely brilliant record, and one that I’ll be circling back to soon enough because I still don’t feel I’ve got the true measure of it.
