2nd July 2024
Christopher Nosnibor
Unless I’m looking in all the wrong places, one genre you don’t seem to find many emerging acts coming through in is hardcore punk. Reissues of vintage bands – even minor cult acts who were criminally overlooked in their time – are coming (back) to light with releases on Southern Lord and the like, but new true hardcore punk acts are few and far between, with many presenting a more metal
This is raw, fast, gritty, and angry. And political. ‘Realise’ is a fist-pumping roar of rage, positively foaming at the mouth with the fury of betrayal. Told from the position of the punter for whom the penny’s dropping that they’ve been lied to and done over, ‘Realise’ rails against the system and the way in which politics serves politicians rather than the people. As they put it, ‘Writing with the credo “Shit’s fucked – call it out”, the song highlights that politics doesn’t, and cannot, happen only once every five years. Obviously, these guys get it, but it still shocks me that there’s such a thing as working-class Tories. They seem to proliferate in run-down rural areas, places like Lincolnshire, North Yorkshire, Norfolk, and Suffolk. Many of these regions are agricultural, and the (ageing) populations have bought the myth that the migrant workers picking and sorting veg for minimum wage – the same migrant workers who serve them their coffees and also service their health in evermore dilapidated hospitals – are stealing their jobs. Those would be the jobs they’re retired from, and would never have done on account of the pay and conditions being poor. But this is the way of capitalism – blaming the most vulnerable for your own plight while aspiring to higher things and buying into the idea of trickle-down economics is simply pissing on the head of the person on the next rung down because the person on the rung above is pissing on you, and because they’re on the higher rung, it must be right. It is, of course, a complete con. Shit is, indeed, fucked.
The bass-rattling blast of ‘Grindstone,’ which first surfaced a few years ago, finally makes it to an EP, and it perfectly summarises the wearying, dulling, life-robbing effects of drudge labour and the living hell of working all hours and multiple shit jobs to make ends not even meet. ‘I got my nose to the grindstone every day / I’m grinding so hard I grind my face away / I leave blood on the floor wherever I go / If I grind much more I’ll be grinding bone’ paints a visceral picture and take the notion of working one’s finger to the bone to its logical conclusion. This is precisely what proponents of capitalism and governments who support it want. A people too busy killing themselves with work just to stay alive hasn’t the time or the energy to protest, to uprise, to vote. Notably, the main parties all spoke of rewards for ‘hard-working families’, reinforcing the idea that both families and hard work are both normal and desirable goals. This is clearly false: not everyone is suited to family life, and rewards should not be based on one’s level of conformity, and a question I have asked elsewhere is why should work be hard? It should be enough to simply work, to earn a day’s pay, and still have the energy – physical and mental – to have a life outside it. Promoting the idea that hard work is something we should want to spend our lives on is simply another means of oppression. And yes, making art is work: art and culture are essential, and the existence of cave paintings is testament to the fact that the need for art is in our DNA. So fuck the pitch that work has to be long hours grinding out shit earning a pittance to fund the CEO’s multi-million pound package as if it’s somehow noble. It’s not: it’s exploitation, pure and simple.
This brings us to the final cut, ‘We’re All Going to Hell’, is a full-throttle rabble rouser with a strong chorus. It’s simple, direct, unpretentious. Much as I admire poeticism in songwriting, every form has its time and place, and Hearse Pileup are agitators, looking to shake people awake. You might think their fanbase would be young and left-leaning, but so many who have grown up under the last government are prematurely world-weary, dead on their feet, and apathetic to the whole circus. These are the people Hearse Pileup are reaching out to. And for this purpose, they don’t need to be subtle, but instead deliver a sonic slap round the chops. And with this EP, that’s precisely what they deliver.
AA
AA
Aural Aggravation 