Though there are fewer celebrations in the UK this week than say, somewhere in middle America where they eat bullets and shit hot dogs, that doesn’t mean this sullen, sodden Scot can’t take a moment to be be thankful too. This year I’m thankful for blastbeats, dissonance, and releases I can imbibe in short bursts. From the music that bubbled up in the tar of Thatcher’s Britain to the contemporary musicians pouring sand in everyone’s ears to drown out the endless stream of outside noise around, there’s never been more opportunity to ruin your neighbours life with snare hits from noisy Brits. Here are some of them.
The Atrocity Exhibit
One of the sharpest cuts of down’n’dirty grindcore in a long time, The Atrocity Exhibit haven’t left my weekly cycle since their last full-length Extinction Solution arrived. Like a battered, ashen copy of an old dystopian novel, the fuzz, grit, and ferocity unload in frankly obscene amounts of red-speckled spit. Music that smells like a green army jacket covered in fag burns and dumped in a ditch.
Corrupt Moral Altar
It’s a rare year where I don’t write about Liverpool’s technically terrifying and thematically titanic rabble rousers Corrupt Moral Altar – this isn’t one of those years. Revisiting 2017s Eunoia this autumn, I couldn’t have picked a better sound to tide myself over with. Massive sounding ideas, performed so precisely it could make a lesser musician shit. I don’t play. It still made me shit.
Gendo Ikari
Gearing up for a stupidly good collaborative release with Retortion Terror and Blight Worms, Scots grindbastards Gendo Ikari continue to play everywhere and with everyone, confusing thrash kids with screeches and dense, sweaty noise terror. Their live-recorded Unit 2 ages like a fine cheese, like the odd smell of a basement venue crowd. Short sets and bent strings. Perfect.
Endless Swarm
Powerful and violent, last year’s Imprisoned In Skin just gets better every time I listen to it. For a culturally explicit reference, the pulpy and punch-heavy pogogrind exists perfectly as a reflection on Endless Swarm‘s hometown, Edinburgh, and it’s famous pulpy author, Irvine Welsh. Ecstasy, Filth, Glue, Porno, Acid House, all could be Endless Swarm track titles.
Ona Snop
Late to the party with regards to Leeds’ Ona Snop but I’ve made up as much time as possible working through five years of short, stupidly heavy releases. Jumped up powerviolence fuelled by dark piss punk and a seemingly endless blast of time changing, room confusing riff shifts, their latest – a split with Failure – is a demented collection of surfhouse slaughter anthems.
Nothing Clean
A hidden gem of throbbing head vein music, Nothing Clean play as the “fastest hardcore band in the world” (I’m paraphrasing from a gig flier). The Leicester band provide an answer to anyone questioning why metal bands don’t just write a hundred riffs and turn them into forty songs over twenty odd minutes. The formula is perfect, the execution is dynamic, the noise is astounding. Pissed-off AND playful.