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UK hardcore has definitely seen its fair share of killer releases since DESOLATED put out their A New Realm Of Misery EP back in 2019. All the Northern Unrest stuff, everything coming out of the BN1, the SPLITKNUCKLE LP… hell, GOING OFF have released more than 50 tracks since then. But while it would be unfair to say the now Sheffield/London-based outfit have some catching up to do what with the whopping great head start they have on most of the new blood – not least with an album as good as 2016’s The End in their back pocket – it is perhaps fairer to suggest there is some pressure to deliver at what is very much an exciting time for the scene, especially with a few line-up changes too.
And deliver they bloody do. Finding Peace is an absolute beast of a record: ten tracks and 25 minutes devoted to mosh and style and violence of the highest order. Whether Tony Evans’ move from bass to vocals has breathed fresh life into the band, or it’s the hand of producer Will Putney making them sound absolutely massive – as indeed he does for everyone – or they’ve just come back raring to go after their time away, DESOLATED feel strikingly energised and ferocious here, more than capable of keeping step with the best that UKHC has had to offer over the last few years.
Of course, it’s not a radical reinvention by any means. Opener The Stomper is exactly that, a largely instrumental intro that reasserts the band’s pit-opening prowess before Lessons promises to fill any remaining available space with bodies – all groove and swagger and gang vocals and the inevitable egregious breakdown to close. Here and throughout the elements are familiar but invariably well-executed, right down to sixth track Endless Betrayal allowing itself a longer and more menacing intro around the halfway mark to reorient the listener before the bludgeoning continues, in this particular track’s case with the added muscle of LBU legends NINEBAR.
The band sensibly save a couple more guests for the second half of the record too, with WHISPERS vocalist Mike Chaiburi bringing a heightened savagery to seventh track Let It Slide, and Camden Good of Detroit’s D BLOC adding a hip-hop-esque bravado to the already considerably swagged-out Victim 2.0 right after that. Such efforts ensure that Finding Peace maintains weight and excitement and momentum all the way to the end – not that its runtime makes this a hugely demanding undertaking anyway – with the beatdown the band drop about two thirds of the way through penultimate track Enemy somehow managing to outdo all else on the record for sheer gurning ignorance, and closer Dead End 2025 beefing up a cut from their 2011 The Sixth Day EP for one final flattening.
This is probably DESOLATED’s best record yet, although we have had The End for about nine years so time will kinda have to tell. Either way, Finding Peace is right up there both in the band’s discography and in the wider thriving pantheon of UKHC in the 2020s. Get on it and throw some limbs about.
Rating: 8/10
Finding Peace is set for release on May 30th via MLVLTD.
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