Once you hear Cincinnati’s Butcher’s Dog, you won’t forget them. Hard as diamonds and heavy as hell, the band’s debut cassette “Purists Piss Codes” emerged from the miasma of the myriad DIY punk releases in 2021 and singularly grabbed the attention of Violent Pest. More music had to be sought out from them. Fortunately for us they delivered a true gem of a contemporary hardcore banger on their first vinyl outing “Age Of Inversion”. This studio recorded EP cleans up their sound just enough to allow the rapid fire vocals, nimble rhythm section and devastating guitar work to cut through even harder. Comparisons have been made to contemporaries like 80HD and Tupperware but Butcher’s Dog come through with a manic style very much their own. Buy this record, play it as loud as you can, kick the speakers in, repeat.

Five songs on 300 clear, heavyweight (45g), 7” vinyl records. Housed in a heavy duty 7” jacket, includes 7” x 14” lyric sheet.

Our take: We’ve been hearing a lot of great music from Cincinnati, Ohio lately, and while bands like the Drin, the Serfs, and Crime of Passing lean toward the post-punk end of the underground music spectrum, Butchers Dog proves the proverbial “something in the water” has seeped into the hardcore bands too. Like my favorite hardcore, Age of Inversion is as progressive as it is intense, fusing a range of heavy music styles into a deftly coordinated strike. The riffing leans metallic, and a track like “Fair Game” would sound like straight up old school death metal if it weren’t so raw and if the vocals weren’t so drenched in snot. Butchers Dog reminds me of Sorry State’s own Mutant Strain; their vocalist sounds a little like Marissa from Mutant Strain, and Butchers Dog is similarly adept at being nimble and heavy at the same time. And they just have a way with a riff, as they display most effectively on the closing track “Enforcer,” whose slinky mosh makes want to Kool-Aid Man my way through a solid wall. A total crusher.