Fast hardcore punk from Haarlem, Netherlands.

Our take: Demo-on-a-7” from this hardcore band out of Haarlem in the Netherlands. I’m glad this recording made it to vinyl because the tape flew under my radar and this needs to be heard! As you might expect given the artwork—distressed drawings of skeletons, old English font, the “O” in the band’s name replaced with a flail—Inside Job plays metallic d-beat hardcore, and while there’s a lot of that around lately, Inside Job does it well. They sound a lot like Public Acid to me (particularly on the track “Battery Acid”) with frantic tritone riffing and heavy and grooving drumming, but with the influences from noise music and metal dialed back just a hair. There are still waves of feedback and the occasional hot metallic lead lick, but those elements never pull the focus from the driving rhythms. While the intensity level is constantly high, occasionally things bubble over into a slightly more manic space (see “Planned Explosions”), the fist-pumping rhythms giving way to something more off-the-rails. It’s not an enormous difference in tempo or intensity, but it’s just enough to avoid things getting same-y sounding. Excellent stuff.

• Format Type: 7"
• Genre: hardcore