Obliterations - Poison Everything

Here, the songs are better, the topics expand beyond Marxist screeds and the ferocity has been pushed further towards chaos. You can only redline an engine so long before it overheats; thankfully, these 13 songs are in and out in 29 minutes and avoid overstaying their welcome.

Meaning Poison leaves you wanting more, even if only a few of these songs are catchy to any real degree. That's not to say they aren't memorable. Quite the opposite - you remember the first time you got hit in the stomach, right? Crippling pain, coughing fit, probably felt like you were gonna vomit right after you keeled over?

In other words, you felt fucking alive. Just like when you're listening to this record. Throw this on and you wanna just break shit over the most venomous release of the year. Which is pretty much how the band sounds when they're thrashing through "Black Out" and "Mind Ain't Right."

While headlong sprints into oblivion are what Obliterations do best, it's not their only trick. "Shame," the album's longest song and the only one to crack four minutes, furiously stomps about looking for someone's face to punch in. Vocalist Sam James Velde's hostility is never more present - nor the bile he spews - than when he growls, "At the end of your rope/You begin to see who you are." 'Black Sabbath meets Black Flag' is a description thrust onto the band, perhaps unwillingly. (Maybe they're in on it, considering they list both bands as being "liked" on their Bandcamp page.) It's not always accurate, but it does effectively sum up "Shame."

Other than that, pick your favorite spasmatic freakout as a favorite. They're all great, whether they're actively trying to destroy the world with audio terrorism ("Normalized Decline" and "Scapegoat") or they angrily trudge through mid-tempo numbers to catch a single breath ("Open Casket" and "The Middle of the End").

Interestingly, it's when they slow down that you hear influences beyond punk and metal. "Ad Nauseum" has a certain Southern boogie to the chorus, and the title track sounds like the best song '80s Soundgarden never recorded. But, really, it comes down to the beautifully unbridled madness of Poison Everything. There's no wheel reinvention in Obliterations' brand of messy hardcore, and there doesn't need to be. The true test of a great hardcore record is if you wanna start a moshpit when you hear it. Having just spun this album again, I know I do.