So Pitted give grunge a glorious bruising

It’s not that they're signed to Sub Pop, the label that spearheaded the 90’s grunge scene. It’s not even the brutal din they create: pounding guitars and paint-peeling screeches buried beneath feedback and dirt, although to be honest they have more in common with Mudhoney and Melvins in that respect. No, Kurt’s shadow seeps into their scrawling, filth-ridden sludge by way of his handwritten top 50 albums list, featuring Fang, Flipper, Scratch Acid, Black Flag and Bad Brains. Whether they’re fans of Nirvana or not, there’s no way in hell that vocalist Nathan Rodriguez, drummer Liam Downey and guitarist Jeannine Koewler haven't poured over the bands on Kurt’s list. All 11 tracks on their stonking debut are shot through with '80s punk snarl.

As a result, Neo races by in a flash - less than 28 minutes. "rot in hell", which sounds like it’s being crushed under the weight of its own heaviness, and the scornful "holding the void" were two of the first tracks the band recorded. In a 2014 interview with Seattle Weekly, Rodriguez blamed the band’s primal racket on "feeling doomed". Certainly, the song writing has only darkened since then, and there is no let up. The visceral "woe" has the band sounding like fellow Sub Pop neighbours Pissed Jeans. "feed me" is a dirge that scrapes along at a snail’s pace, purposeful and hateful with tuneless robotic vocals, while "the sickness", despite being a highlight and one of the record’s more tuneful moments, churns with malevolence: "I’m going to rot away. Every single day I take a look at my dreams, and they’re all soaked in piss".

So Pitted are named after a YouTube video of the same name, in which a surfer, clearly in the thrall of the moment, tries to describe his euphoric exaltation when riding the waves. "That surfer gets carried away talking about what he loves, because to him that’s all that really matters,” says Rodriguez by way of explanation. “To this surfer ‘so pitted’ is following through instead of bailing. You can take that abstraction and repurpose it to anything you like.” Suddenly it makes sense that a band who can be inspired by such joy have managed to concoct music so filthy and vindictive. Neo is an emotionally draining listen that can only come from its creators pouring every last bruise and drop of sweat into it. Every second of Neo aches with loathing and harshly recorded terror and we buy utterly in to every exhilarating, hate-wrung note.