GELD make their Relapse Records debut with their third full length, Currency // Castration! The Australian band distills a despairingly hellish vision of the world into a thundering crack to the temple through an unsparing fusion of hardcore’s bleakest violence with metal’s ruthless strength-through-conviction. GELD's abrasive take on the genre is distorted through a lense of fuzzed out psych soundscapes; vocals truly sound like unhinged barks, while guitars, bass, and drums crash against one another frenetically, each track burning brighter and brighter.

Every moment of Currency // Castration is urgent. Tracks such as “Chained to a Gate” edge and scratch at a relief that is ultimately denied, toying with the nightmarish promise of a breakdown that never comes. Elsewhere, "Cut You Down" pulses with frantically itching riffs that stream forth. "Fog of War" snaps and snarls; while "Secret Prison" evinces the honed physique of Japanese hardcore fed through the broken brain of someone on a years-long Rrröööaaarrr-era Voivod spin-out.

Despite the band's innovative approach to the genre, GELD makes no pretensions at being “interesting” for interesting’s sake - As vocalist Al Smith puts it, “One of the most boring things people can do is try to dress up what someone else has already contributed to a genre and make it ‘clever’… We’re more interested in finding our own position.” With Currency // Castration, GELD offers no promise of a higher purpose or resolve. Rather, they lean into dissociation, finding truth and meaning in the transcendental joy of simply escaping, surviving, existing.


Our take: Currency // Castration is the third album from the prolific Australian hardcore band Geld, finding them moving from their longtime US home of Iron Lung Records (a natural fit for the band’s dark and progressive style) for Relapse Records, who has been poaching some of the most musically promising bands from the hardcore punk underground. Whenever a hardcore band moves from a smaller DIY label to a bigger one, fans often wonder how the change will affect the music. I was a big fan of Geld’s previous records on Iron Lung (we named their first LP, Perfect Texture, Record of the Week back in April 2018), but Currency // Castration, if anything, dials back the progressive elements we heard on Geld’s previous records. The sound is still left of center, with the guitars in particular often bathed in effects like flanger and delay, but there’s only one of the industrial interludes that peppered their previous records, and you won’t hear anything like the saxophone that popped up on Soft Power. Instead, most of Currency//Castration is devoted to fast hardcore of Geld’s particular warped variety. While it feels cliche to point out the mid-paced banger as a highlight, “Hanging from a Rope” might be the album’s strongest point, with its bouncy, hooky riff serving as the perfect frame on which Geld can hang their fucked sounds and vibes. Geld remains a demanding but rewarding listen, and I’d still recommend Currency // Castration to anyone interested in the area where hardcore’s rawest and most progressive strands overlap.