positive punk: PHOBIA

10.15.2021

PHOBIA

"generation coward"

Year: 2021

Country: US

City: Mission Viejo, CA

Label: Willowtip

Format: CD, LP

Tracks: 13

Time: 15 min.

Genre: rock

Style: Grindcore

Long revered as true masters of grind, Phobia return with their latest storming album Generation Coward and its a full-on attack on a generation obsessed with social media and its flaws, with the band sounding as pissed off as they always have, perhaps even more as all the songs on here are delivered with a seething vitriol that is all the more impressive seeing that the band have been around for almost thirty years.

Generation Coward follows on from 2017s Lifeless God and like that album, this is relentless grind with crust and hardcore punk elements thrown in for good measure from start to finish. Kicking off with the viciously paced groove of “Cynic Bastard”, a song that transforms from the intimidating beginning into foreboding grind in the blink of an eye and from then on in, the heaviness is unrelenting.

Tracks like “Excretion”, “Cut Throat”, “Falsification” and “To Be Convinced” are all berserk blasts of grind from start to finish and sound massive while “Haters Be Hating When Ya Living Good”, “Imbecile”, “Internet Tough Guy” and the South Park sampling “PC Fascist Fuck Off” hammer the targets of Generation Coward perfectly in true grindcore fashion.

Even when the pace is dropped a touch as on “Aspiration Lost” and the closing “Condemned To Tell”, Phobia lose none of their power and still sound as heavy and pissed off as when they are going full throttle. The 8 second “Bozo Of Grind” is also pure grind madness and the fact that Generation Coward is thirteen songs in fifteen minutes shows exactly how grindcore should be delivered and Phobia deliver it in spades. This is angry music for angry times and Generation Coward perfectly attacks its targets with the right mixture of black humour and furious audio venom ad shows that Phobia go from strength to strength with an undiminished resentment for the modern world (*Review by Gavin Brown ).

Discogs , Lastfm , Download , Instagram , Facebook , Twitter ,