THE MELVINS
Nude With Boots
(Ipecac)

HERMANO
...Into the Exam Room
(Regain)

UNLEASHED
Hammer Battalion
(SPV)

RUN YOUR MOUTH
3-Way HC/Garage Split
(Rumour Control)

CABRóN
Mexican Shoe Thief
(Robot Enemy)

A HORSE CALLED WAR
Stumble at Every Hurdle 

(Calculon)

HEATDEATH
S/T 

(Conspiracy)

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Get ready for a headache. This arm-breaking release by Ontario’s The Endless Blockade is all about the short fuse, the sucker punch and the kick in the nuts. We are talking about power violence of the shortest and most spastic mode; that small sub genre that splintered out of hardcore and that has in brevity, speed and rage its most deep rooted ingredients. For those not familiar, well it is pretty similar to a cross between hardcore, trash and grindcore. As The Endless Blockade interprets it; it is about delivering power with violence. Or violence through power. It is a blunt subgenre of uncomplicated riffs that can be executed at all speeds. In Primitive (the band’s second full-length aside EP’s and splits) for instance, The Endless Blockade take turns to shift moods. “Pig Life” starts off as hardcore and then by virtue of its anarchic speed turns to grindcore faster than you can say ‘hurry fucker’.

And yet there are other moments when The Endless Blockade slows things down to an unsettling mood. Those are of course the briefest of them all, when a riff is strummed but somehow no feeling of moroseness filters through. This isn’t doom god damned!  Instead, it is the feeling of impending condemnation that those moments evoke which makes The Endless Blackade’s sound so dangerous. Occasionally, like during the almost closer “Path” this quartet even gives electronics a chance. They are not necessarily used as an extra instrument, but they add to Primitive’s exaggerated sense of urgency and desperation. It is the same case with absolute closer “Do Not Resuscitate”, perhaps the band’s epic, it fucks with noise but makes sweet love to the electric guitars only to come inconclusive after a castigating beat down.

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