Straight Jacket Nation: S/T 12″

Description

2017 sees the release of the second Straightjacket Nation LP. Intimidating and foul, ridden with feedback, lurching and slamming, screeching and boiling over. There’s no hint of youthfulness here, instead lurks a fearful incarnation of hardcore punk at it’s darkest and most foul. One moment disciplined, the next a sprawling chaos. Straightjacket Nation stands alone, a horrible entity carved out in stone. Mean. Strict. Remorseless. Vengeful. Harsh. SJN.

Our take: Brand new 12 from this long-running Australian band, and it was a bit of a surprise for me at least I didnt even know they were still around! On their previous records, SJN wore their Cleveland influences proudly on their collective sleeve, with a sound clearly grounded in the nihilistic thrash of bands like 9 Shocks Terror and H100s. This time around, though, it sounds to me like theyve transcended those influences. On the one hand theres a distinct Gauze vibe running through this record no one out there really sounds like Gauze, and bands who try to imitate their whiplash tempo changes usually end up sounding mathy. However, theres something of that vibe here, even if its hard to put my finger on what precisely it is. Its hardly straight Gauze worship, though, as theres also a strong thread of more modern hardcore running through the record. The combination of the Gauze-esque changes and more modern-sounding breakdown parts means that this ends up sounding like a noisier, more chaotic of that Omegas LP that came out on Beach Impediment a few months ago. This is probably a little more punk and a little less hardcore, but it definitely appeals to a similar sensibility, and is just as killer as you would expect any release on LVEUM to be.