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After a noteworthy 4-song demo in 2016, here's the debut full-length from Raleigh's Essex Muro. When Essex Muro started off they reminded me of the dense and muscular psychedelia of bands like Destruction Unit or Ex-Cult, but in the months since their demo they've moved away from their earlier, more garage-based aesthetic toward something harder and faster. It's not quite hardcore exactly, but it's definitely informed by it, taking the primitive pounding and the manic energy of early 80s hardcore and fleshing it out, letting the obsessive forward momentum spill in other, unexpected directions. From the early 80s right through to the present, Raleigh, North Carolina has had a knack for producing bands that toe the line between cerebral and primal, and on Numb Life, Essex Muro prove that they fit right in with that tradition.