I don't know how much of it has to do with the fluctuation of my own tastes, but I have found A LOT of really good power violence records this year - either ones that have come out recently or that I missed the boat on slightly. And at the top of that pile is The Endless Blockade.
From Toronto, I can only assume these are ex-members of something I should probably know, but it seems pretty inconsequential since their catalog, and Primitive especially, stands on its own merits. While I have heard some detractors that were unamused with their split with Warzone Womyn (which I have not heard, admittedly), I can say that anyone that enjoys fastcore/thrashcore/625core or whatever branding you want to slap on this will be most pleased.
Taking cues from Man is the Bastard, Primitive generally stays in the upper tempos, punctuated with blast beats while occasionally dropping into sludge territory to break up the monotony that a lot of these records fall into. There is also an almost requisite amount of experimentation that goes along with their genre hopping - short noise tracks, bizarre samples, noise loops behind mid-paced chord progressions. All of it makes it about ten times more interesting than the last Infest rip-off you saw open for This is Hell.
I also want to make special note of the lyrics - a lot of these bands fall into some sort of cliche where they don a phony idiocy or barbaric tone, with silly lyrics about feeling schizophrenic, The Endless Blockade brings some substantial literary value. The track "Raised by Wolves" breaches the mythic ideology of man's development as marked by its inclusion of canines in its mythos - in a minute long song. So while the twenty minute album might feel like it doesn't give you enough music to chew on, wading into it intellectually makes it feel like a fantastic investment.
