Шведская группа Totalitär вернулась с новым альбомом, а британские Jøtnarr и Wetnurse представили свежие релизы в жанрах хардкор и краст

There’s an enduring urban myth about a man who, having been banned for life from his local bar decades ago, presumes it’s all long forgotten and pays a return visit. No sooner has he stepped through the door than he’s told “fuck off Ken” (or whatever his name is in the story) by the landlord. That’s what this new self-titled album by Swedish D-beat giants Totalitär is like, snapping back into belligerence after the passing of a generation as if it’d been five minutes. Released by De:nihil in Europe and Prank in the States, and all in their native language as ever, Totalitär’s first release since 2007 barely hits the quarter-hour mark – the only hint of a contemporary conceit, in that their previous albums were made in and for the CD era. You’d wolf down a second helping if offered, obv. Having recorded their first songs 40 years ago, one can’t overstate how fastidiously Totalitär have kept their eyes on the road in this time. D-beat and/or Swedish hardcore is rife with examples of groups whose heads were turned by the blowsier pleasures of metal: not here, chum! What the quartet do have in their DNA is rock & roll, of the type we talk about when we talk about (say) Motörhead or The Damned, and that’s how Totalitär swings a bit even when going like the clappers. Guitarist Lanchy Orre is also a long-term member of Brainbombs – two parallel practises whose twains rarely meet, but if you slowed down and grotted up his Stoogean solo on ‘Stolta Barbarer’ a crossover event wouldn’t be out of the question. With Jallo Lehto reaffirming his case for being one of the D-beat’s great players by tweaking the formula, it’s arguably Totalitär vocalist Per-Olof Frimodig whose ageless hoarse power keeps this spanking LP most in touch with the Discharge big bang. Crazy Clue would be a good name for a regionally popular early 90s rapper whose CDs now sell for hundreds of dollars. In fact, it’s something even better – an Anglo-Canadian hardcore punk superunit who are yet to perform in public but whose studio time has birthed debut LP Where The Dregs Dwell (Beach Impediment). Not subject to much hype, that I’ve noticed at least, this feels more like one of the loud fast music events of the year with each listen. The Canadian part of Crazy Clue, Jonah Falco and Mike Haliechuk, have been bandmates in Fucked Up for a quarter-century: seasoned hardcore hands who, paradoxically, haven’t recorded anything this bludgeoning together for a long old time. Falco has been a UK resident for a lot of that time, and while it’s not clear who first had the idea to do what, it makes sense that the trinity would be completed by Yorkshire-living Londoner Bobby Cole, who as vocalist kills it for each of WTDD ’s 10 songs. Like Falco and Haliechuk, he’s a multi-instrumentalist, which I imagine was reflected in the writing and recording process. Either way, there’s depth to this barrage, with the guitarists peppering breaks and solos with some deliciously weird tones and textures that nudge the LP beyond ‘record-collector hardcore’ territory. ‘Hierarchy’ is practically psychedelic, if mainly on account of its mix, and ‘Broken Spirit’ closes the album by pivoting to air-fisting streetpunk. EZ8 would be a good name for an ageing beatdown band who decry wokery in their social media activity. In fact, it’s something even better – 80s-coded punk with a hefty classic pop streak and little to none of the members’ hardcore priors in play. Another outfit whose first release, just under a year ago, predated their live debut, since then they’ve formalised their name as The Easy Eight, recorded a second EP’s worth of songs and given the lot to Static Shock to release as an LP, The Easy Way Out. Most of The Easy Eight’s five members have also lined up alongside one another in The Chisel, Stingray, Arms Race and Chubby & The Gang, to list four of more. Charlie Walker, the latter group’s founding and sole consistent member, also sings here; while the mid-Atlantic twang is a new development, you’d otherwise think this band represents a drive to get back to what it’s supposed to be about, rather than what Chubby & The Gang became before disbanding last year. Unfussily recorded and better for it, The Easy Way Out harks back to the kind of boozy Ramones reverence which abounded in the 90s – The Queers, The Vindictives etc – with outbreaks of greasy schlockabilly, as on ‘The Descent’, and a couple of sore-thumb tinkly keyboard parts. Issuing a debut album proper (via K and Perennial) after compiling two tapes onto a long player last year, Mopar Stars play the kind of long-striding, forearm-smashing powerpop scuzz that you don’t have to be American to play but ensures you’ll sound at least a bit American if doing so. They’re from Philadelphia and appear to be looking askance at their eastward neighbours with album title Official Researchers Of The NJ Devil and melancholy highlight ‘NJ Darkness’. At least one of the band, bassist Nneka Anyaoku, has a New Jersey past, though singer and lyricist Nao Demand has said the song’s about the premature death of a friend from there.  With all of Mopar Stars sporting hardcore scene credentials (and all apart from Anyaoku having played in metalpunk crazies Zorn ), if this is primarily an itch-scratching project to share Nao Demand’s Replacements and Lemonheads-themed dreams with the public, suffice to say these dreams are supremely vivid, and could easily resonate beyond DIY climes. Across eleven brisk tunes, solos sometimes toy with J Mascis-type frazzlement, and Anyaoku plus drummer Evan Campbell are punky and robust as a rhythm section. Two separate songs celebrate car mod culture, potentially with ironic distance but it still does the trick as a lyrical conceit. “Only room for two in this souped-up coupe…” IOU, Lothario ’s new self-released 7-inch, is being pressed to coincide with a tour of mainland Europe that starts a few days after this column hits the e-streets. If I lived in Linz or Benidorm (for example), you’d see me moving freely to these Melbourne marvels’ garage rock sauce-strut, but these three songs will suffice as a substitute. Lothario is essentially Annaliese Redlich, who did everything other than play drums on earlier releases but now has a band of Melb scene nodes from bands I mostly haven’t heard of (guitarist Elsa Birrell’s Shove are an exception). Hogtied, Lothario’s 2024 LP, is awash with lyrics I can only describe as single entendre, but on this occasion Redlich is given to slightly more grandiose metaphors, and on ‘IOU’ the song underlines the lifesaving properties of true friendship over music equal parts gawky post punk jangle and herbert-rock pint-slosh. I dig the single’s two nominal B-sides more, as it goes: ‘The Animal’ is 130 seconds of staccato chug with wild, near-constant soloing and ‘Bad Actor’ is a top shelf pub-punker with handclaps, a bassline you could edit for the disco and some heartland rock in its arteries. Almost exactly 14 years ago, an early edition of Straight Hedge included a review of Newcastle bands Grace and Tide Of Iron’s split single – quality stuff it was too, hardcore filtered through sludge metal and noise rock respectively. All three of Ballpeen, who have just released their second and final album What You Need, What You Deserve, played in one or other of those bands. So it’s a welcome back, a goodbye and a see you soon, as each member already has something new on the go. Ballpeen is, or was, a case of ‘this 97-year-old DIY band still makes grungey post-hardcore the old-fashioned way’. Recorded in a single day last year, with Graham Thompson adding his vocals later, What You Need… contains a slightly passé 13 songs, though isn’t too long in either feeling or reality. It lands in a real sweet spot which echoes the early 90s Amphetamine Reptile roster, Drive Like Jehu’s first album and the less straight-up hardcore Ebullition Records acts from about this time or a little later. Ritual Error from London are doing a thing partway similar and I hope the trend pendulum or ‘trendulum’ swings back to the point where lots more bands follow suit. Essex troopers Jøtnarr have been doing their leftist blackened hardcore thing for nearly as long as I’ve been doing this thing, and due diligence would have surely seen one of their previous releases repped. As it is, they have a new album – their second – which is both a new broom and a reaffirmation of their base musical virtue. Feet First On The Corpse Path, co-released by multiple labels (Bunkland, Prismatik, Squidgypop and SuperFi) as is Jøtnarr’s wont, introduces singer Samantha Fairclough, with vocal incumbent Chris Moore now concentrating on guitar. Again, this doesn’t radically alter what we the listeners hear: Jøtnarr is still a two-guitar-no-bass deal, not that Moore and Simon Rollo lack for bottom end between them. It’s all heavy and thunderous, though, and the riffs are strong to the point Feet First… could have been constructed around them. On ‘Lady Of The Blade’ they’re sorta blackgaze; with a different mix, ‘Hold Tight’ would sound like jazzy post rock, and there’s a seven-minute closing number featuring a sampled Arundhati Roy speech. But this is, indubitably, a hardcore album by a hardcore band. As for Fairclough, who is undertaking something like her fifth frontwoman assignment here, it’s no shade on Moore to say her strafing vocal exorcisms represent an instant upgrade. A distinct early 2010s tang to this stretch of the column, because next up we have screamo dramaturgists Lord Snow. Chicagoan in their earlier years but now living coast to coast, after regrouping for their first release this decade – 2025 LP Have You Heard Of The High Elves, a set of old stuff re-recorded – here’s Riften, four freshly written songs released by Persistent Vision in the States and a Dog Knights / Shove / Voice Of The Unheard threeway in Europe. By the time Lord Snow released their debut demo, 15 years ago, I’d largely let my attention wander from the scene which In My Day was called ‘skramz’ as a sort of joke and is now just called that. This lot would have been magnets for praise in any era of techy emotional hardcore, though, because they hit all the genre pinch points and do their own thing too. Niko Zaglaras’ guitar weaves like a stolen bike through traffic, Steph Maldonado’s bass is a blown-out throb like you used to find on old Load Records releases and vocalist An Lacy makes hay with their role, solemn-on-paper poetry transmitted in tones of submerged anguish. It’s drummer Erik Anderson who really elevates Riften for me: tracing his buckwild freestyle playing on this EP, you’d assume he’s spent time in the improv trenches, but nope he seems happily genre-confined. Who are Gyyuck and what are the reasons for them being everything I want from a band? Here’s a list! They are from Falmouth, where all sorts of far out queer DIY shit seems to be happening, often with their or individual members’ direct involvement. The trio call themselves “tranarchist concrete dealers” on their social and streaming pages. There, you can hear their self-titled, 12-track, 21-minute tape and bathe in its hydrochloric noisepunk stagnancy. Should you wish to buy the tape, you must either hit up their local radical bookshop or pay Gyyuck £666 via Bandcamp – a comically inflated fee, OR IS IT? Some light digging indicates members’ sidelines in screamo, gabber and noise projects, all of which could cast a shadow over the sound of Gyyuck, but beyond that I’ve no real inkling what’s led them to sound the way they do. Which is? Avowedly grotesque primitive sludge aggro made out of guitar, drum and aarrrgh, where every riff feels like being jabbed in the kidney with a fork and every song is called something like ‘Flesh’ or ‘Gnaw’ or ‘Piss’. Primo White Mice / Burmese / Sightings 2003 type spew but with something ineffably British (no! English… no! Cornish) in the pooling liquid. Closing September’s NSH with Wetnurse, who are a metallic crust band from London and to that end tie together a few dangling themes with their debut demo: oily black jeans and birdsnest barnet, capital city punx all playing in umpteen bands, Hellhammer-as-Year Zero apocalyptica, the glory of shit-fi. Bobby Cole from (today) Crazy Clue taped this on his four-track and two of Wetnurse have started a tape label, Kill The Dove, to release it. Another member, vocalist Rowan, drew the cover art of bodyless babies and not-quite-Celtic knotwork, which gives you a decent idea of what you’re getting if you’re down with this gear (and might make you think this is some free festival folk band if not). Rowan sings in Irish on ‘Pháiste’ and ‘D’ailse’, first and last of five songs: each unmistakably metal in duration and arrangement, with crossover chuggage and Sacrilege guitar atmos. The three in the middle are a little more compact but basically of a piece, constantly verging on instrumental chaos as lyrics speak of war machines and quote Bobby Sands. Do you like the idea of a bunch of people born long after the mid-80s living out their mid-80s stenchcore fantasies? Can you even imagine what a stenchcore fantasy might involve? If so, proceed. Straight Hedge Mix September 2026 Tracklist Totalitär – ‘Stolta Barbarer’ Crazy Clue – ‘Ambivalence’ The Easy Eight – ‘The Descent’ Mopar Stars – ‘American Fast Thing’ Lothario – ‘Bad Actor’ Ballpeen – ‘Perpetually Fatalistic’ Jøtnarr – ‘Lady Of The Blade’ Lord Snow – ‘Shrine Of Azura’ Gyyuck – ‘Taste’ Wetnurse – ‘D’ailse’