Sect - Blood of the Beasts (Southern Lord)
In such troubling times as we now live it truly confuses and confuddles me that there is not more in the way of aggressive, punked out protest music. So when the first few bars of this beastly album pour out like a thick sonic tidal wave of anger and misery it made me smile from ear to ear that finally a band seem to have found their balls and are not scared to let them dangle free and intimidatingly for all to see. The members of Sect are life-long hardcore committed scene veterans, including vocalist Chris Colohan (Cursed, Burning Love, Left For Dead), guitarists James Chang (Catharsis, Undying) and Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis, The Path Of Resistance), bassist Steve Hart (Day Of Suffering), and drummer Andy Hurley (Racetraitor, The Damned Things).
Blood of the Beasts is a very angry album indeed. With driving blast-beat drumming, guitars that are tightly wound and aimed like venomous arrows directly into the cerebellum and vocals that could shred flesh from bones it is a finely crafted creation that seeps a mood that permeates the entire record. The lyrical content may be a way away from direct action on a political or social level – but they are dripping in angsty, throat-ripping fury that the whole package is elevated to a new dimension and makes this stand out as kindred spirit of Converge, Code Orange Kids and Hatebreed – it’s little wonder with Converge’s Kurt Ballou reigning in the chaos behind the producers desk, adding more sauce to the pedigree.
Music that is both vicious, energetic, inventive and so precise that it takes no prisoners and does not care how you feel about its existence, as little as it cares about yours. A band who seem to have channelled the universal feeling of malaise and existential dread and directed it into musical molotov’s that are ticking down to the inevitable and are primed to take a limb or two if you try and intervene.
Stand out track “Redundant Gods” says everything that you need to know about the band and their outlook. This is protest music as it should be.