As Si Fox hammers away at his bass in Hammer The Bastards‘ second track, Black Friday, you’ll find that a big, shit-eating grin has spread across your face inadvertently as you take another swig of hi-strength cider and wallow in the filth and fury of it all. Brit crust merchants Wolfbastard are back, and, for the most part, burning…

Me, I like ’em best when they strip things back a little, lay off the double kicks and go full d-beat; but a whole album of ‘that kind of thing’ might be a bit much for the less discerning, so I guess it’s good that they try and mix things up a little. After hi-strength cider #7, you probably won’t care to much anyway…

The title track finds this Manc trio trespassing a little on The Exploited‘s newer territory, whilst opening track Can’t Escape The Grave hits the Euro black n’roll trail and never looks back, careering across the continent in an old Luton Van fuelled by White Lightning and cheap speed. It’s exciting stuff.

Death Creeping In is where this set of ears gets fully connected though; a furious crust onslaught that Hellbastard would be proud of, it’s an absolutely ripping slice of British noise, as exhilarating to hear now as it was when the style emerged in the eighties. And, it has to be said, done incredibly well by these newish bastards on the block, right down to the paint-stripping Bonesesque solo from Dez.

Fear The Exxxecutioner is similarly exciting balm to old ears who feared they’d never be stimulated by choonz like this again; ‘black thrashing metal, never going to die!’ they bark at several points during the track, and I for one am willing to accept their assurances based on the tar-black sound they’ve whipped up here.

Desperate times always provide a fertile seed bed for bands like Wolfbastard, bands born of the nihilist no-future mindset such times cultivate. We who enjoy music like this might be in for a bit of a year, then…

Hammer The Bastards releases on January 14th.