Dan Hillier
Presented like a call to arms against the transphobia being brandished by governing powers and warring pop culture figures, New Wave Of British Transphobia sees Gender Warfare distilling the potent energy synonymous with their infamous shows into musical chemical weaponry to be used against those who defy their existence. And as one can expect, there’s nothing subtle or held back here. This is the sound of hardcore, punk and dance orientations chemically fused, and like the thought of hardstyle being blasted at Outbreak Festival or the sounds of The Armed being emitted from a sound system in a desolate warehouse in a Danish industrial estate, this is pure ceaseless bedlam that’s going to confuse some yet hype others.
Opener ‘NWOBTP’ sets the tone of the record musically and thematically from the offset; glitching ambience snaps into vitriolic hardcore that jerks into breakcore against distorted bellowing in the tone of righteous and urgent protest. The EP starts as it continues; violently. But such is the point and intention as ‘Cissmass’ and leading single ‘(I Am Not Your) Dude’ allude to. As the former erratically twitches with the same sporadic fervour of the aforementioned likes of The Armed, ‘(I Am Not Your) Dude’ tackles the subject of those who defend using so-called gender neutral expressions with a rage that escalates to a hardstyle gabber backdown that’s almost more intense than anything that could come from the realm of hardcore and its ilk. If anything, this song – and breakdown to be exact – is the encrustation of this EP and Gender Warfare as an entity; it’s harsh, thrillingly intense, experimental and delivered with a sense of authentic rage that is required to truly combat the bigotry that is being waged against marginalised groups.
But even when Gender Warfare dial back the energy and reload, the intensity of their work remains high. As the bouncy ‘Stuck’ highlights, this is thanks to the brilliant punchy production of the record. As ‘Stuck’ circumvents genre with a synth-speckled riff that sounds akin to Tokky Horror, Fakeyourdeath and Raketkanon falling into each other’s arms after sharing some unexpectedly potent pingers, this EP sounds positively alive and animated in a way few records can manage. The task of trying to achieve the intensity and feel of their intimately chaotic live shows has been well and truly achieved here, and in turn, nothing presents this further than the two final salvos of ‘The Flame // A Lie To Your Face’ and ‘Queers To The Front (Gender Warfare)’. One can only imagine the cathartic chaos these tracks will incite live, with the former mirroring the escalating nature and violence of unwarranted police presence and the latter being a rallying call for queer people who have been segregated to the sidelines of the society with breakdowns and fight riffs galore.
In all, if you want something subdued, reflective and precarious, this EP is not for you, and nor should it be. This is a brilliant, vital and genuinely thrilling barrage of in-your-face hardcore delivered with the authentic rage and fury required to incite a reaction; be that the euphoria of collective dance or the will to protest against those arguing against your own existence. In a pink-washed pride month that’s become a playground for corporations and one host to politicians playing with the rights of queer people for votes, this is an incendiary well-needed form of retaliation.