NAILS

Now that most people are really, really angry all of the time, NAILS should, by rights, be the biggest band in the world. If only humanity had that much sense. There have been plenty of extreme music that has pushed the boundaries of fury forward over the last few years, but Todd Jones's militant wrecking crew have battered the competition through sheer force of misanthropy. From the genuinely startling opening ambush of "Unsilent Death", to their 2016 big label debut "You Will Never Be One Of Us" (Nuclear Blast),  NAILS' stripped down brutality has sanded away the divide between grind, hardcore, metal and noise with a deadpan, hateful flourish. If you need music that sounds like a fleet of bulldozers dropped onto the heads of your enemies, NAILS can and will provide.

Always less one-dimensional than first impressions suggested, Jones's zealous vision has sprouted some new vestigial limbs on his band's fourth album. "Every Bridge Burning" remains, at heart, a visceral explosion of violence and bile, much as its predecessors were. But while NAILS are rightly content to stay in their own bloody lane, they also sound intent on purposefully fucking up their own formula and seeing what carnage ensues. At a whiplash-inducing 18 minutes, this is as streamlined and destructive as anything the Californians have released, but signs of evolution are easy to spot.

It starts as fans will be hoping. "Imposing Will" and "Punishment Map" are fast, ferocious beatings, delivered with the expected levels of spite. They start, they smash everything in sight, they finish. The title track is a psychotic hardcore sprint that dissolves into a punishing beatdown with a strong odor of filthy, crossover thrash. More surprisingly, "Give Me The Painkiller" is a jolting shot of pure speed metal insanity, with strong MOTÖRHEAD undercurrents and a white-knuckle, runaway train vibe. On the skull-flattening death metal tirade of "Lacking The Ability To Process Empathy", NAILS are masters of mutant grooves, while on the rabid, twisted "Trapped", they teeter on the edge of abject chaos.

As it roars past, "Every Bridge Burning" delivers so many fists to the face that songs can fly by without registering. Feral whirlwinds of blastbeats and sludge, "Made Up In Your Mind" and "Dehumanized" are both indecently thrilling. Meanwhile, "I Can't Turn It Off" is gutter-level hardcore punk played with astonishing brute force, and closer "No More Rivers To Cross" (take that, JIMMY CLIFF!) is the slow-crawling curveball that may give listeners some respite after the sustained hammer attack of the preceding 15 minutes. Anger is still an energy.