Discharge - End Of Days

Six hallowed words come affixed to British hardcore: "Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing." Two others would be "Never Again." If you don't know DISCHARGE, shame on you. The very definition of hardcore music ought to come with DISCHARGE stuffed inside the same sentence. As one of the fastest, loudest, most ireful pack of trash radicals that ever dared to throw down against Her Majesty and oligarchic governments at-large, DISCHARGE has always worn their grit and grime (and the shadowing skewered dove from John Heartfield's photograph “The Meaning of Geneva, Where Capital Lives, There Can Be No Peace”) like street badges.
Despite a brief hiatus, DISCHARGE has surreptitiously hung about the scene, dropping a split release with OFF WITH THEIR HEADS in 2012, and the "Propaganda Feeds" EP a year prior. This year, DISCHARGE rears its three-headed hydra consisting of vet players Royston "Rainy" Wainwright on bass, Anthony "Bones" Roberts and Terence "Tezz" Roberts (who returned in 2014 and shifted over to second guitar from drums) for a new full-length, "End Of Days". Jeff "J.J. " Janiak has taken
over for Anthony "Rat" Martin, and, of course, Kelvin "Cal" Morris before him, while drummer Dave Bridgewood (aka Dave Caution) rounds out DISCHARGE as a quintet. With added beef to their already grisly din, "End Of Days" sounds just like that: a whipping punk cataclysm yielding no quarter until the final tick of its 33:43 running time.
The album wastes no time making a colossal impact with the fast and noisome "New World Order". J.J. Janiak fits DISCHARGE's undulating chaos like a pristine-gelled Liberty spike. "Raped And Pillaged" is an appropriate title as DISCHARGE goes even faster for 1:45 with some of the album's choppiest beats from Dave Caution. "Meet Your Maker", more of the same in less time at 1:22. If it's even fathomable, the pace on the title track rockets another couple clicks, only with tighter beats, tighter guitar lines, tighter everything.
"The Broken Law", "Killing Yourself To Live" and "Looking At Pictures of Genocide" slow down a smidge, but lose not a lick of momentum. Ditto for "False Flag Entertainment" with guitar flurries making the song seem faster than it is. "Hatebomb", "Accessories By Molotov (Part 2)" and "Population Control" are some of the most furious performances on "End Of Days", which says everything on album that's fucking intense from start-to-finish.
Repetition is the only fault to be found with "End Of Days", and it's not a fault if you're used to DISCHARGE and vintage U.K. hardcore. The up-and-down riff patterns are part-and-parcel to the Discore sound, as much as the clobbering beats, which Dave Caution has exuberantly recaptured. "End Of Days" is one of the most hellish-sounding albums DISCHARGE has ever recorded. It vicariously smells of piss reek wafting from an alley out of early eighties Stoke-On-Trent or Birmingham. It recalls long-standing caveats about the monarchy's demesne. Most of all, it just rips. One would like to hope new albums from G.B.H. , THE EXPLOITED and even kindred spirit anarchists SUBHUMANS are at least being tossed around to propagate a full-on UK82 revival. All that'd be missing is everyone's favorite D-beat target, Margaret Thatcher.