Six-track LP from these Belgian hardcore punks, filled with anger and versing on anti-fascist and anti-racist ideals. From Oostakker near Ghantes, BURNING KROSS delivers violent and fast-paced hardcore punk with crust and D-beat references and deep bass vocals ready to fight. Extra points for the album cover art featuring a KKK scumbag receiving a burning cross right in their torso.
I can never figure out why this band flew (and still flies) under the radar, but this collection will surely speak to any deniers. This is the embodiment of passionate political ’90s hardcore—the band was basically MANLIFTINGBANNER without the Van Den Berg brothers, but I always felt like BORN AGAINST/UNIVERSAL ORDER OF ARMAGEDDON comparisons were more appropriate. This release contains everything and it’s packaged with the care and consideration that the band deserves. If you’re going to start somewhere with DEAD STOOLPIGEON, then I suppose you might as well start with everything.
Three tracks of ultra-bleak Dutch hardcore. This band wastes no time tearing into fast and ferocious territory with plenty of room for pit-demolishing breakdowns. No, not in a bro hardcore way, like truly violent-sounding. This band started out straighter kängpunk, but thankfully is in stranger, more satisfying territory with these songs. The echoing, throat-rattling vocals have major presence, and the guitars add texture and tone from across several genres from traditional hardcore to deathrock. It all blends, though; this doesn’t sound “experimental” but rather is a no-frills affair. Slams from the needle drop ‘til the bitter end.
Sweden, the country where playing ANTI-CIMEX lulls children to sleep. There is certainly no shortage of hardcore bands up there, and here comes a new contender in the notorious and much contested “fast and furious käng” category. SLAN is from Gothenburg and includes members of the rather good STRUL (in a SKITKIDS way), among other bands that I am not going to pretend I actually know. Their first EP Skiter I Allt released last year was a definite scorcher if you like your Scandicore on the mangel side of things (by which I mean more on the faster, MOB 47 side) if you want to be anal about it, and the boys are back in business with a full-length entitled Ägd. The recipe hasn’t changed much, but the production is a tad rawer and the vocals more upfront. While the EP had a definite ’80s Stockholm feel to my impeccable ears, the LP makes me think of a dirtier version of KRIGSHOT as well because SLAN manages to play that fast, and of Uppsala bands like CUMBRAGE or even of early VICTIMS in the singing style. It is a seriously raging, direct high-energy effort with some class riffing, but I can’t help but find the LP a little long for this style of punk with a playtime of almost twenty-four minutes (and everyone knows we have a twenty-minute attention span these days, if that). At the end of the day, yet another hard-hitting win from Sweden.
