***Bankers are getting richer, cops more corrupt, and politicians are running entire nations into the ground to stuff their pockets, while the rest of us toil and wilt in a gutter of helplessness and resentment, as the shadows of war and class enslavement elongate further into a futureless, horizonless twilight. After ten long years shrouded in silence no one would have imagined or foreseen the return of Bristol’s masters of bleak sonic detestation. Yet their grandiose re-emergence from the shadows is not only unexpected, but it restores Hateful Abandon to their most shimmering and relevant form, resounding as more necessary, intimidating and bloated with bile than ever before, as they regain their role as sinister immune response to a broken world overrun by bastards. The duo of multi-instrumentalists Tom “Swine” Price and Martin “Vice Martyr” Brindley thus rebound to resplendent despondency after a decade of silence with “Threat”, a brand new full-length release of cross-disciplinary sonic execration once again weaving the grim fibers of post-punk, industrial, anarcho and crust punk, black metal and darkwave into their own idealization of resentment and scorn toward a world they do not recognize or accept. “Threat” not only perfectly continues the legacy of their previous three acclaimed full-lengths (2008’s “Famine”, 2011’s “Move”, and 2014’s “Liars/Bastards”) erasing a ten-year absence completely, but it evolves the duo’s unrivaled vision further, cementing their status of defiant outsider cult consecrated by a career spanning almost twenty years that has has seen few credible rivals or imitators. Once again entirely written and self-recorded as a secluded duo with zero outside input or involvement, “Threat” picks up straight from where the band had vanished back in 2011, unfolding eight new songs and thirty eight minutes of pessimistic, blue-collar cultural warfare that tell the story of a deafened world headed straight into doom. A story told by stringing together the greatest moments of 80’s and 90’s British independent and alternative musical counterculture and beyond, weaving them into an unheard auditory stream of consciousness that encompasses existential post-urban no wave, decadent neofolk, tenebrous industrial dirges, and wrathful spasms of pseudo-punk and minimalist black metal, all stirring into a grim maelstrom of paranoia and revulsion. The echoes of Killing Joke, Joy Division, Dead Can Dance, Swans, Godflesh, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Darkthrone, Cocteau Twins, Skinny Puppy, Cabaret Voltaire, The Birthday Party etc., all reflecting through the shards of a splintered sonic mirror, at times directly cited, others more distantly evoked, as they ominously reverberate through a barren post-industrial wasteland of broken cities and ruined lives.
