Like a fever starting to break, the room starts spinning and you start to sweat. Everything starts going faster faster faster. CHURCHGOERS captures this uneasy feeling perfectly with speed and aggression bordering on nausea. From the newer wave of british hardcore, these young guns fill their debut demo with sloppy toppling riffs and vicious vocals. Harkening back to the tradition of bands such as Hated Youth, The Fix and Deep Wound, Churchgoers insists on bringing this style into the future. The kids have had their say...


Our take: 11PM Records brings us the demo cassette from London’s Churchgoers. Falling on the rawer, punker, and more early 80s-inspired end of the contemporary UK hardcore scene, it’s easy to imagine Churchgoers on a bill with bands like the Annihilated and Last Affront (who also released a record on 11PM)… I’d go to that gig! This is just a theory, but it seems to me that one of the distinguishing characteristics of contemporary UK hardcore is that many of the players grew up listening to New York hardcore, which comes out in their music in subtle ways, even when I think they’re trying self-consciously to do something different from that. I don’t know if that’s the case with Churchgoers, but I hear it on a track like “Hillsy’s,” which sounds like something that could have been on the New Breed compilation tape. Most of Churchgoers’ songs, though, are more in the fast and raw, early 80s vein, though the way the drummer lunges ahead of the beat on the fast parts also makes me think of Heresy (the super short track “M.S.P.” serves as further evidence for that line of thinking). Maybe you won’t hear any of that and Churchgoers will just sound like a ripping 80s-style hardcore band to you, but either way, it’s a win.