Kinetic Orbital Strike Rotten Lies EP
Fuck me, I have to admit that I really have been blessed this month with the recordings I have been assigned, as they are all right up my alley. I was right to sacrifice three cans of lager and an AMEBIX patch to the Gods of Crust, as my wishes were quickly granted—I hope my prayers for protection against ska and shoegaze also worked. The moniker KINETIC ORBITAL STRIKE apparently refers to a modern military technology, “the hypothetical act of attacking a planetary surface with an inert kinetic projectile from orbit,” and not a ninja move as I initially thought. I was relieved to find the actual definition as Google only pointed me toward World of Warcraft at first, which kinda filled me with a sense of gloom (and sadly not of GLOOM). The name might be a bit of a mouthful, especially around 2:00 am, but this Philadelphia band (with members of the mighty POLLEN or IMPALERS, among many other bands) unleashes that familiar brand of brutal, distorted, noisy discore that we have all grown to love (right?). They sound like the almighty FRAMTID teamed up with COLLAPSE SOCIETY and FEROCIOUS X in order to borrow DISCLOSE’s gears and flair in order to inject more DISCHARGE worship into their Japanese käng tornado, with a spoonful of HORRENDOUS, too. The drummer is on bloody fire on this recording, I have rarely heard such manic rolls and the insane level of intensity takes one’s breath away. They manage to keep that urgent, raw vibe and still sound punishingly heavy (my very angry neighbour banging on the door would not disagree). Angry hardcore at its best, and the self-released version (Phobia Records will take care of the European one) has an ANTISECT-inspired wheat logo on the back which checks yet another one of my romantic boxes. Top-notch hardcore.