Leeds/London band KOMA deliver their debut LP “Internment Failure”: 12 tracks of brutal, unrelenting, constantly contorting and mutating hardcore – perfectly encapsulating the desperation of living in the final generations of a failed state, watching the life of the planet ebb away.

Frantically written and recorded across 2 cities within the band’s first 12 months of existence, KOMA casts a wide net of global influences but refuses to be indebted to any one singular band or scene. At times recalling the classic Finnish & Swedish hardcore of MELLAKKA and CRUDE SS mixed with the raw distorted brute power of VOĈO PROTESTA and BASTARD; echoes of the unhinged mayhem of ATAQUE FRONTAL and CHAIN REACTION subside to moments of gothic tension like TOŽIBABE and PYHÄKOULU. KOMA makes a bold and ambitious statement of intent, a wholly-realised vision and fully-formed sound of pummeling riffs and powerful vocals that will remind of SACRILEGE’s debut.

“Internment Failure” was expertly recorded by James Atkinson over a weekend at The Stationhouse in Leeds and then pushed beyond the extreme by Shigenori Kobayashi at Noise Room.

Record sleeve features a nightmarish painting/collage by artist Thomas Wade, logos & text by A. Wildman, and a double-sided insert poster/lyric sheet designed by guitarist Simon Marsham with Isabel O’Toole.


Our take: I’ve been listening to this first LP from the UK’s Koma all week, and I feel like I’m only just finding my way into it. I had been listening to the record on streaming while taking walks in the warm (i.e. not unbearably hot) fall North Carolina weather, and the album’s subtleties have interesting corollaries with change from summer into winter, which seems to happen fast by the standards of geological time, but as a human you need patience to see and appreciate it. Things clicked for Koma when I sat down with the vinyl, as they do with a lot of records. The dense, monochromatic illustration on the cover where there are distinct skeletal shapes, but it’s tough to tell where one element ends and another begins; the dimly lit band photo on the back cover where you can only just discern human shapes in a dark, medieval-looking building; the murky production that refuses to cede attention to any one element, a writhing sonic morass; the fractured lyrics that touch on themes like isolation and the supernatural, but resist efforts to wrench easily summarizable meaning from them… Koma’s sound and visual aesthetic are woven from the same cloth. Their music feels introverted, troubled, even hard to listen to at times, which is a strange emotional register for hardcore to occupy. And Koma is hardcore… loud, fast, and heavy, but with none of the grandstanding or feel-good vibes you get from other points on the genre’s lengthy continuum. It might not be for everyone, but it’s a powerful statement.