Aside from the obvious acclaim and adulation that’s part and parcel of being a CZ reviewer, one of the main benefits comes from being occasionally blindsided by an amazing new band. Frisk are the latest to knock me on my tailbone, hailing from Leeds and fitting in nicely with other uncompromising oddballs like No Form, Perspex Flesh and Whipping Post. This tape offers up a seething, slobbering dose of hardcore that’s dense, desperate and almost impossibly ugly, lurching between different styles (90s ABC No Rio one moment, murky Mysterious Guy the next…) and running the whole putrid pile through with layers of claustrophobic noise. There’s an abrasive, slablike quality to the way the songs have been constructed, as though the pieces have been rudely tipped from a wheelbarrow rather than artfully or lovingly assembled – a strange thing to say considering how perfectly the end result has been rendered, but then Frisk are nothing if not contrary.
