Way back in the day when the A-Team were fugitives hiding out in the Los Angeles underground, Al Bundy was trapped in the eternal hell of the shoe store and The Comedian and Rorschach flipped the four-colour world upside down and inside out, Hardcore was, for the most part, and to coin a phrase, short, fast and loud. 

It was a glorious time to be part of the scene, to feel like anything was possible and could be made to happen as long as you believed in and adhered to the DIY ethos that was its beating heart. Despite all of the punk rock piss and vinegar that inflames your soul, age and the real world eventually give you an omnipresent spanking and you realise that, as Greg Graffin so eloquently mused “faith alone can’t sustain us anymore”, cynicism sets in and your unwavering trust in the credo that you valued above almost everything else, starts to slowly, and inexorably, fade into the background noise of everyday life.

Occasionally though, a band appears out of the scene ether to remind you how good things used to be and could be again, and ladies and gentlemen, King of Pigs are one of those bands. This isn’t my first rodeo with this Nottingham-based wrecking crew, as I saw them give Negative Approach a run for their money in Birmingham about six or seven years ago, and their previous album Filth Fear Death was, and still is, a constant part of my musical diet. 

This time though, they’ve turned everything up a notch or two, and have upped the ante on their old-fashioned Heresy meets Poison Idea by way of D.R.I. circa Dealing With It  Hardcore that drinks deeply from the late eighties UK scene, and delivered a jaw-dropping eleven tracks that are over, said and done in around twenty minutes. After Victory Comes Defeat will tear your face off and make you call it Daddy in the first sixty seconds, and by the time it’s finished the only words your core-addled brain will be able to utter will be “Please sir, can I have some more”… Tim Cundle