Whilst Blighty doesnt have much to celebrate or be cheerful for at the moment, the upshot of that is the fantastically bleak music that bands like Betrayers are currently spitting out. Hailing from Bristol/Forest Of Dean, life must be particuarly brutal over there right now, as what we have here are seven tracks of absolute spite and abject misery. Indeed in an effort to can the current feeling, the four piece made the decison to lock themselves in a room for six hours to bang this out in a live situation, where emotions are on a knife edge. The result is quite fantastic, and perhaps one of my favourite slabs of grindcore I’ve heard so far this year.

If I’d been handed this in 1997 and told it was a Relapse Records release, I would have no problem in believing that, as they channel bands of that era, such as Brutal Truth or Nasum with ease, but there’s also a sprinkling of homegrown heroes Napalm Death somewhere in that mix, along with a definite hardcore influence, especially in tracks like ‘Knives In A Line’ They also dont mind slowing it right down to Soilent Green style bowel evacuating levels on tracks like ‘Darkside Of The Mountain.’ Song title of the year goes to ‘Angela Lansbury vs Nicholas Cage’ which sees the band veer into powerviolence territory, which again is done effortlessly and totally organic and before you know it we hit last track ‘Laura Gray’ where drummer Greg Cummings seems intent on kicking the last bit of life out of us with some great double kick work.

‘Weapons For Killing Cattle’ is a very, very good first E.P and leaves you hungry to see these guys live. It’s powerful, it’s heavy, it’s utterly tortured and if they can channel half of the energy of this E.P into their live set, then the UK underground music scene has just made a powerful ally….Chris Andrews

Get ‘Weapons For Killing Cattle’ here:-

https://betrayers1.bandcamp.com/album/weapons-for-killing-cattle