Our take: Anyone who has spent a little time with the Sorry State newsletter knows we love a straightforward hardcore ripper, but even more, I love when a band makes something unique within a genre that many assume long since ran out of ideas. On one hand, Kommuniké is definitely a d-beat record, not out of step with the typical stuff that Sweden’s mighty D-Takt & Råpunk Records puts out. On the other hand, though, it doesn’t sound quite like anything I’ve heard before. The closest point of comparison I can come up with is Montreal’s Absolut (incidentally, another D-Takt & Råpunk band). Like Absolut, Anti-Metafor doesn’t so much combine punk and metal as they exist in a liminal space where distinctions between the two genres dissolve. On the hardcore end, we have the pounding drums (right at the front of the mix, as they should be) and the harsh vocals (which remind me of Bastard), but the bass and guitar have a thin, trebly sound that is more like the production on Norwegian black metal records. The songs themselves also dance across these lines, with raging verses and choruses giving way to long instrumental passages centering on lengthy guitar leads that are at once melancholy and triumphant. It might sound like stadium crust if it had stadium sound, but that thin and trebly guitar sound again brings to mind the trance-inducing atmospherics of the Norwegian black metal scene. These subtleties might fly over the head of the d-beat novice, but those of us with a collection full of black and white covers and an inordinately large “D” section in our alphabetized stacks will appreciate what Anti-Metafor has accomplished here.