Review Summary: Your. Fucking. END.
Listening to
Splinters From An Ever Changing Face will make you feel like the poor, mangled sod depicted on its cover. Having succumbed to the album's terrifying allure and been pummelled into a puddle for my troubles, I honestly couldn’t be happier.
Heavy spelt with a capital
F. and
U.: the hardcore supergroup’s highly anticipated debut LP is everything that their crushing 2017 EP left fans craving, with just a little extra madness baked into each and every harrowing layer. We’re treated to the eclecticism of a
Full of Hell, the aggression of a
Nails and the creative vision of a
Converge, all neatly crammed into 30 seamless minutes. Unsurprisingly, it’s
fucking glorious. Frenetic, mathy riffage descends into blackened blast beats and barbaric growls in the blink of an eye, then back again, and then back again – and yet, despite each song’s apparent lack of orthodox structure, each sonic shift feels just
right. The band’s disparate influences slot together as if it were easy, grinding the unsuspecting listener’s brain to mulch in the process. The resultant massacre is a dizzying celebration of everything the genre can, and should, be: relentless whilst never senseless; gloriously unforgiving, but never overwhelming; utterly breathless, yet immaculately paced. You’re left gasping for more rather than pleading for a breather, which, given just how filthy the mix is here, is nothing short of a miracle. Add Brendan’s exceptional lyricism to the equation (should you be willing to look up what he’s actually saying), and what you’re left with is the new, undisputed benchmark for hardcore in 2020.
