Corrupt Moral Altar - Whiskey Sierra 7"

Corrupt Moral Altar are bad for me. The last time I saw them play I ended up spending every last penny I had on shit beer, staggering around Glasgow city centre 'til 3am in search of something deep-fried before giving a couple of them drunken directions back to where they were meant to be crashing that night. Considering it was only around the corner from my own flat, I'm reasonably sure it took far longer than it should have.

Like I said, they're bad for me.

That said, when a band plays the kind of utterly fucking manky racket that can be heard on their Whiskey Sierra 7", what do you expect?

Kicking straight into the title track, the riff immediately grabs you in a headlock, before the drums proceed to knock your skull in. It's total cacophony, never relenting for a second. Even the breakdown about halfway through offers no breathing room, inflected with blastbeats and shrieking vocals as it is. Closing out with a sludge tempo stomp, they keep up the intensity right to the end, before launching into the blistering 'Lord'.

Drummer Tom Dring lays down a not-quite-d-beat rhythm that the rest of the guys make some downright vile noise over the top of. Every time I hear this track, the "WOO!" a few seconds in has me cracking up. It's like Refused, if they had any fucking balls on them that is. The first half of the track is a start-stop staccato stagger, before they lower the dose and take the whole thing down to a doomy crawl.

The atmosphere of the latter half of track is totally different to the rest of their output, and is a great example of where they could take things when they get around to recording a full-length record.

Whether they're playing fast or slow, either way it ain't fucking pretty.

The last two tracks are songs that could originally be found on their Luciferian Deathcult EP, as well as their Needle Drugs demo. I'm pretty sure these are the recordings from the Needle Drugs session.

Either way, these songs are just as raw as the two newer tracks, Chris Reese's vocals sounding particularly scathing on 'Politics Is A Bargain Between Beggars', and the abrasive groove of 'You Don't Have To Go To Clown College' demonstrating just why so many folk toss around Iron Monkey comparisons when talking about CMA.

That comparison may be apt, but it doesn't quite convey just how fucking furious this band are in their own right. The swaying breakdown that closes out the record will provide the perfect soundtrack to my own wasted movements when I see them live again in a couple of weeks.

Pray for my liver.

Whiskey Sierra is available for free download off their bandcamp, and you can pick the actual 7" up from the band's bigcartel. I recommend doing that because it's available with a variety of mental t-shirt designs for a total fucking bargain price. Go grab one!

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Old Skin - MÆRE

Manchester is churning out some fucking great bands at the moment, between the dark hardcore of Esoteric Youth, the putrid grind of Swinelord, the chaotic noise of Pine Barrens, the blistering blackened racket of Under The Horns and Cold Fell, and the caustic hardcore of Old Skin, I can't wait 'til my next opportunity to get down there again and check out some shows. Andrew at Dry Cough sent me a sampler of Old Skin material, and I was totally blown away by it.

Although this sampler only contains 3 minutes of music, its so packed with ideas, devastatingly delivered, its enough to have you spinning it ten times in a row. Old Skin recall a lot of the current crop of grind-inflected hardcore thats been making waves from across the pond for the past few years, and if you've been digging the filthy fury of Trap Them and the endless bands borrowing liberally from that template, you'll fucking love this.

Eschewing the done-to-death 'HM-2 + D-beat' formula and delivering pure, refined abrasive anger at whiplash-inducing tempo, Old Skin breath life into a sound you may have heard before, but played with a level of conviction that's refreshing.

As soon as they have more material recorded, I'll be first in line to have my ears assaulted.

There's not much info going about the band in terms of online presence, so I guess you'll just have to pay extra close attention to Manchester's currently excellent hardcore scene, and go see these guys (and all the other aforementioned bands) live the next chance you get.

Full Of Hell - Rudiments Of Mutilation

That Full Of Hell dabble in noise recordings on the side isn't exactly a secret, but the fact that they open their new album Rudiments Of Mutilation with such a challenging opening track as 'Dichotomy' serves to show just how seamlessly they are able to weave their penchant for abrasive noise into their just as confrontational hardcore.

The piercing feedback that screeches out of the speakers is a sharper, more painful proposition than the sub-sludge of many of the current crop of hardcore bands thieving from the monuments of His Hero Is Gone, and it serves to set Full Of Hell apart from the rest. The raw fury heard in Dylan Walker's wretched vocals is not forced or faked, it's the sound of true intensity.

This album is not something you listen to so much as suffer through, and I suspect that was the intention behind it. Throughout the course of Rudiments of Mutilation the many stylistic, atmospheric and momentum shifts will confront and eradicate your expectations, as well as serve to confirm that there is no band out there creating an erratic racket quite like Full Of Hell.

Stream this album over at the A389 Recordings bandcamp, buy it if ya dig it, and go see them live the first chance you get. Total acid-spitting fury. Numb Your Mind.

Read my full review at The Sleeping Shaman...