Don’t know why, but I was expecting power violence from this lot. While I imagine they’re au fait with the genre and the occasional hint of it wisps through, the band instead play a barrelling brand of hardcore that’s equal parts sped-up HHIG, Converge-style dissonance and an odd conflation of all the raging Germanic hardcore there’s been from Systral to this current point in time. It is, in a word, raging; a complete maelstrom of skin-peeling aggression, shrieked vocals and punishing gut punches from beginning to end. Neither the brutality nor the tension relent throughout, and I’d say you should be definitely giving ‘Lies We Live’ a go if you’re fond of Cloud Rat, Hierophant and the higher quality end of what Southern Lord has seen fit to vomit forth of late.
