So, SECT are pretty much a hardcore supergroup, featuring as they do vocalist Chris Colohan (Cursed, Burning Love, Left For Dead), guitarists James Chang (Catharsis, Undying) and Scott Crouse (Earth Crisis, The Path Of Resistance), bassist Steve Hart (Day Of Suffering), and drummer Andy Hurley (Racetraitor, The Damned Things). Not familiar? Well, the US / Canadian scene of the early 90s doesn’t really have quite the same caché of the mid-80s and had remained pretty well underground, at least in international circles, but that arguably renders it truer to the cause.
‘Blood Of The Beasts’ is seriously hardcore, and perhaps illustrates why the 90s scene never achieved the status of the previous decade. Of the album’s 10 tracks, only 2 extend beyond the 2-minute mark, and they all collapse into a blurred mess of noise and shouting. I say that with trained and appreciative ears.
It’s an overloading mess of distortion and hoarse-throated vocals. The rage burns relentlessly and the production is as raw as Colohan’s larynx. There are occasional choruses, but they’re dispatched at such a pace that you’ve missed them before you’ve even registered that it’s time to blink.
It’s a brutal blur, a furious flurry of noise, a blasting explosion of rage. It’s absolutely killer but how the hell do you dissect, mull, and unpick the finer points of the sonic equivalent of a gang-bashing? You don’t. You roll with the blows and slip into unconsciousness.
