INDUSTRIAL PUKE

It's always good to see people spending their time wisely. INDUSTRIAL PUKE have plainly spent most of their lives listening to ENTOMBED's "Left Hand Path" and DISCHARGE's "Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing" at excruciating volume, and quite conceivably at the same time. That's not to say that these veterans of the Swedish underground have simply borrowed other bands' clothes. It's just that there are very few things more likely to get the adrenalin flowing than a perfect blend of the aforementioned elements. D-beat plus death metal, executed by bug-eyed diehards, equals absolute fucking carnage: "Born Into The Twisting Rope" is 23 streamlined and utterly incensed minutes of just that. INDUSTRIAL PUKE deliver an instant rush of gnarly, distorted exhilaration and keep the dial firmly in the red until the bitter, beaten-to-a-pulp end.

Have I mentioned that this record is really fucking exciting? Despite the fact that INDUSTRIAL PUKE are hardly breaking new musical ground here, they have infused what they do with such primitive, stripped-back ferocity that it never conforms to anyone else's blueprint along the way. Instead, these songs are like white-hot blasts of pure belligerence that erupt, smash everything in sight, shotgun a jumbo can of beer and then exit through the massive hole in the wall that it left on the way in. As flagged by the quartet of tunes that first appeared on last year's "Where Life Crisis Starts", the Swedes have a punk streak a mile wide. The likes of "Mental Taxation" and "Hell is in hello" owe an unapologetic debt to the Stockholm death metal gods and their grubby HM-2 pedals, but it's raging and rageful hardcore, delivered at full pelt, that dominates here. "Banished" sounds like an ultra-brutal POISON IDEA out-take; "Constant Pressure" blurs the line between GBH and BOLT THROWER; both "Industrial Puke" and "Cleaning (and Awaiting Death)" take an appropriately brief 90 seconds to salute early NAPALM DEATH and the seminal SIEGE. Meanwhile, INDUSTRIAL PUKE have the casual confidence to demonstrate mastery of macabre doom riffs and evil thrash on the comparatively epic "General Gluttony" and riotous closer "Innards on the Outside".

When it comes to highly evolved, deathly D-beat hybrids that you didn't know you wanted, "Born Into The Twisting Rope" is just about perfect. Ten songs, 23 minutes, and no skull left unsmashed. Meet your new crust-metal overlords and bow down (puking optional).