Nothing less than a plausible contender for hardcore record of the year comes to us from the Milwaukee label Unlawful Assembly, a brand spanking new split LP by two Austin, Texas groups who’ve both previously made some waves already with excellent debut tapes on the local label Sound Grotesca in 2021 and ’22 respectively. Both groups operating on the rougher end of the hardcore punk spectrum, they certainly don’t invent anything new here but rather, they charge up tried and tested ingredients of noisy oldschool hardcore with a sense of danger and unpredictability rarely heard in their particular niches. Right out of the gate, Save Our Children’s tunes strike me as wildly more more elaborate and inventive and in a whole different league compared to the bulk of variably oldschool thrash-infused hardcore groups, the grim overall sound aesthetics unable to fully distract from a pervasive sense of musical adventure and playfulness. And if you thought all that was already going way above and beyond your average hardcore punk offering, wait till you get to hear those Stunted Youth tracks, which exchange the slightly metallic flavor with a more garage-y feel and a lot of subtle melodic flourishes to their underlying tunes, coupled with some world-class hyperactive shredding and tons of unexpected catchyness in their breakneck speed attacks. This is the perfect storm of both creative and primal energies i’d wish to see unleashed more regularly in a genre that all too often seems content with just replicating the most basic, established tropes ad nauseam.
