As dark as a rainy day on the coast, Plymouth-based filth sympathisers Helpless are here to completely fuck up your day in the only way they know how. Pulling on the flaws and failings of their youth in a seaside home as inspiration, the band’s debut EP is dripping heavily with discontent and is as deprived and desolating as it comes. Clocking in at just over 10 minutes, ‘Helpless’ is made of the sort of sludge that clings to you and simply doesn’t wash off.
Painting a picture of complete resentment through the pulverizing ‘False Hope’, the fidgety ‘Vercificator’, the punk rock rhapsody of ‘Young Rewired State’ and the downright disgusting ‘Foxconn Suicides’, the trio apply pressure on how morbid they can possibly be and let your battered eardrums reap the benefits. With no-one else delivering hardcore this technically and uncompromisingly bruising right now, and a lingering feeling that Helpless haven’t even moved out of first gear with this slice of muck, it is rather exciting to see how much bleaker than can go in the future. Roll on the misery.
4/5
’Helpless’ by Helpless is out now on Holy Roar Records.
Helpless links:
Facebook|Bandcamp
Words by Jack Rogers (@JackMRog)
