GELD - Currency // Castration LP

The Australian band distills a despairingly hellish vision of the world into a thundering crack to the temple through an unsparing fusion of hardcore's bleakest violence with metal's ruthless strength-through-conviction. GELD's abrasive take on the genre is distorted through a lense of fuzzed out psych soundscapes; vocals truly sound like unhinged barks, while guitars, bass, and drums crash against one another frenetically, each track burning brighter and brighter.

"A few cynical contrarians reading this are probably quipping something about how Relapse releases lots of hardcore-grind, and while I appreciate them for keeping me on my toes, Currency // Castration is purely grind-free, thank you very much. While I wouldn’t say it’s completely devoid of metal’s influence, those aspects play out more in the poisonous guitar tones and blown-out drum sound than the songwriting or drumming. Geld borrow sparingly from black-metal and thrash (and Septic Death), sparsely applying it to the overall sonic experience, which is fast raging hardcore with a smattering of moshy breakdowns. I’m strongly reminded of the sound and style Youth Attack fostered in the ’10s, sounding more like Aerosols, Raw Nerve and even The Repos than anything else, really. The riffing is very much in line there – a more complicated take on first-wave hardcore like Rattus and Die Kreuzen – and the gravel-voiced shouting of vocalist Al Smith seems to take more influence from Ildjarn than Uniform Choice, which of course is the way of the Youth Attack breed. Geld break up the onslaught with the instrumental industrial soundscape “Across A Broad Plain”, which feels more like a G.I.S.M. move than anything else, and which I’m hopefully allowed to say out loud now without one of their members crawling out of some old fiber-optic cables in my basement and strangling me. Come to think of it, G.I.S.M. are on Relapse now, too! Everything is crazy!" - YGR