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Extreme Noise Terror - Self Titled
Released by: Willowtip
Released on: November 6th, 2015.
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England's Extreme Noise Terror's first studio album in six years is yet another slab of noisy, nasty, chaotic, raw hardcore that starts off with the opening track Punk Rock Patrol. That's kind of a goofy title, right? Right, but it's a great way to open up the album - the vocals from Dean Jones and Ben McCrow vocals are guttural, insane and sloppy as all Hell while the band just explode in the mix. Producer Mark Harwood didn't overdo it here, this stuff is primitive and dirty sounding and it definitely harkens back to their earlier material
The second track - Dogma, Intolerance, Control - is even more over the top. It's insanely fast and really just an all out assault on your ears. The band, which has been around for thirty years at this point, is well named. And that continues throughout the album. No One Is Innocent, the longest track on the record at three and a half minutes (epic by ENT standards) sees Jones and McCrow trading off leads in absolutely insane ways while I Like Cola, a cover of a track originally recorded by Japanese hardcore band Outa, shows that as dirty and sleazy and fucked up as Extreme Noise Terror get, they've still got a sense of humor.
Think Outside The Box sees Ollie Jones' guitars up front in the mix for a ninety second blast of speedcore lunacy while Chained & Crazed is just under two minutes of riff heavy hardcore with absolutely bombastic drumming from Michael Hourihan. An Endless Cycle Of Misery is quite possibly the fastest and most indecipherable song on the record. That Hourihan and bass player Andi Morris somehow manage to keep the pace as ridiculously fast as they do is some sort of accomplishment. Sheep In Wolf's Clothing and Cash And Trash don't deviate from the earlier tracks much, which is fine - more grinding hardcore played insanely fast with crazy dueling vocals is what you get.
The vocals on Cruel And Unusual Punishment sound like they've come straight from the pits of Hell, they're ridiculously tortured sounding (although in the middle section of this track the band actually gets a little bit more melodic for a few seconds before then once again going straight back into noise territory), while Last Fix Of Fame somehow matches, if not surpasses, that level of insanity. Cage Paralysis blasts away for two solid minutes, again with Jones and McCrow plunging the depth of insanity, while the album closer, Only In It For The Music Pt. 27 (Black Putrefaction), puts up big, loud riffs and grunting, guttural vocals in a weird staccato mix to start with before kicking out your teeth and using your balls as a punching bag.
The press release that came with this says that everything was recorded live in the studio without click tracks or digital fixing of any kind used and that they used vintage analogue amps. That probably helped a lot in getting the sound that the band offers up on this record, that completely raw, almost under-produced sound that works so well with their brand of hardcore meets grindcore meets crust. This won't convert those who don't dig Extreme Noise Terror but it is a nice return to form, one that should certainly appeal to existing fans and maybe even win them over some new ones. This album is just batshit crazy.
