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Liverpool harsh crust punks LIFE EXPECTANCY are back with a ground shaking noise screw that is giving Thatcher's rotten old bones a fresh set of fractures. Engulfed in noise, expanded human involvement, volume beyond the needle - everything is more More MORE! Images taken from 80’s era newspapers help to convey the enduring bleakness of the disappointingly timeless subjects they explore on 'Sold' - urban decay, decline and poverty. The picture of the old lady casually walking over a knocked out cop earns a special nod from us. Fuck a police state. Urban decline never sounded so good.
Our take: Liverpool’s Life Expectancy returns with their second cassette on Iron Lung Records, and it is a howling morass of blackened d-beat bleakness unlike anything I’ve ever heard. While there’s a fairly straight up, Doom / Discharge-style hardcore band at the core of Sold, what separates Life Expectancy’s music is their ability to evoke the uncanny through their production choices, which sculpt the noisy detritus of your typical raw-ass d-beat recording into a Goya-esque blurred nightmare vision. While you can usually pick out a riff and a (d-) beat somewhere in the onslaught, those elements are way, way in the backseat… it’s like you’re looking through a pane of dirty, frosted glass, down a long, dark hallway, and way down at the end of it there’s a blackened d-beat band practicing by candlelight. But the draw isn’t just, “oh, this is raw and fucked-up sounding;” the noise textures are a thing of beauty in themselves. I find myself straining my ears to figure out what I’m hearing. Is that a human voice? A squeal of feedback? Part of the riff? A demon sucking the world into a hellish oblivion? I can’t figure any of it out, but I love the process of trying as this whirlwind of noise swirls around me. I understand, though, that there’s a lot here not to like. Many of you will say, “you can’t even hear the drums! (or the guitars, vocals, etc.)” and dismiss it outright. Others will be looking for a Physique / D-Clone style attack with harsh tones but precision dynamics. But for those of us who appreciate—even crave—the drone, who will submit and let these waves of noise carry us off into a black, violent sea… nothing is going to scratch that itch like this.
- Label: Iron Lung Records
- Format Type: cassette
- Genre: hardcore
- Year: 2026