Label - Church Road Records
Release Date- 25 March 2022
Words- Tony Bliss
Coming across like a straight knife-fight between ‘You Fail Me’ - era Converge and later day Pig Destroyer, it’s safe to say that Plymouth based blood-spitters Helpless are a bit of a nasty bunch. Emerging five years after the release of ‘Debt’, their widely acclaimed debut LP, the trio were swiftly snatched up by UK taste-makers Church Road Records for the release of ‘Caged In Gold’. And with good reason, as this is ten overdue tracks of gleefully nose-flattening violence.
Indeed, the band makes no bones about their sonic ethos as the first four songs erupt in a poisonous mist of pitless blast-beats. Constructed around a steel-clad framework of militant grindcore and powerviolence, there is plenty of ultra-hostile exuberance to swing your (figurative) fists to, however it becomes clear as we reach fifth cut ‘Single File’ that Helpless are a more three-dimensional prospect than we may have assumed. A doom-laden, atmospheric death march which calls to mind a more succinct Cult Of Luna at their cinematic best, this drastic change of pace is an avenue the band would do well to explore further.
For the most part however, ‘Caged In Gold’ is all-outwar, the likes of a raging ‘Forced Group Extraction’ and the sub-two minute ‘Suppression’ delivering bursts of nails-hard noise and hissing extremity, shades of U.S heroes Cult Leader coupled with numerous touches of black metals dissonant weirdness and mathcore slash 'n' stab all building on the remorseless, break-neck whole, then spat back at us with the utmost aural hatred. When songs like these are dispatched with such conviction, it’s nigh on impossible not to have the air wrenched from your lungs. This thirty-minute sonic beat ‘em up will leave you gasping for breath.
8/10
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