Off to Udine a tranquil looking place in the NW of Italy here and no doubt partly responsible for shattering any peace and quiet in the region we have noise-mongers Rest (certainly not living up to their name) to blame. There’s not a huge amount of info to go on here and indeed not a great surplus of sounds either as this 5 track disc is short. sharp and very much to the point. The band don’t bother with any of those things called song-titles either just numerically entitling there blasts of discontent which are described as a “punch in the stomach for all All Pigs Must Die and The Secret’s lovers!”

It’s not all full speed ahead here either and on first impression the down and dirty guitar sound could have you thinking you had pressed play on some SweDeath HM2 worshippers all the rage at the moment. This quickly goes into a crust enthused romp of blackened hardcore though and the band get all their aggro across as they batter and rant away in a pissed off with the world sort of fashion that takes no prisoners in the slightest. Choppy and chuggy, the second heaving movement hurtles away and bombs along for all of 1:40s, this lot don’t really like to overreach things and no doubt their shows react in a heaving mass of bodies falling flat on their faces. There’s some neat grinding riffs on part 3 and the drumming has a stop start precision on it, thundering away and driving the velocity along with the haranguing vocals. There’s a bit of a filthy sludge slow down showing they can take feet of peddle, bringing the atmosphere to the fore without compromising on the heaviness in the slightest. They wring this out further with some elongated and tortured sounding riffs and a rotten mid-paced lurching groove to part 4 allowing some neck wrecking action and some beefy vocal bellows in. The culmination is found with a track actually longer than the 5 minute mark an instrumental apocalyptic funeral rite with sampled voices in panic and a sense of stifling urban paranoia behind it. Sirens scream as emergency services steam to the scene and silence settles; we are done; rest is again an option.

I am assuming this is a debut release from Rest who have only been around since 2014. It packs plenty of punch into its short running time and leaves a foul taste in the ears. Get yer lugholes around it at the following links.

(7/10 Pete Woods)

https://www.facebook.com/Restbandofficial

https://3rdirex.bandcamp.com/album/rest