Vicarage have been around since 2018, but only released their first single three years ago – almost to the day – on November 18th 2021. Since forming, they’ve been on five UK tours alongside acts like Grove Street, Ingested and Death Before Dishonor, as well as joining the queercore duo Death Goals on their 2023 album release tour. Having only put out a sum total of seven songs so far, with two of those being singles off of this very EP, they’re already making some waves and will make far larger ones upon Perfect Hatred‘s release.
Their blend of blackened hardcore has come together in a perfect storm on this EP, with a surprisingly cohesive format of a lengthy opener into three more compact tracks that flows like a release made by a far more seasoned band. The atmospheric elements serve to give the listener an uncomfortable chill up the spine and across the shoulders, before sharpened guitars and caustic vocals run a stampede across your eardrums and the abyssal bass tone combines with the crushing drums in a wave of sound that’ll knock the doors off of a barn at twenty paces.
“The song soon opens its gaping maw and swallows you whole, taking you deep into the swirling blackness that Vicarage inhabit.”
As ‘Honour Thou’ first rears its head upon the listeners arrival to the EP, you could be forgiven for thinking that Vicarage might be some vaguely progressive band – but the song soon opens its gaping maw and swallows you whole, taking you deep into the swirling blackness that Vicarage inhabit. Razor riffs and anguished howls swoop around, and there’s barely time to duck them before the next set of mosh-inducing cymbal crashes have swept upon you. With the more than healthy run time of seven minutes, “Honour Thou” is an all-encompassing introduction to the bands sound by way of exposure therapy, and enables them to show off a multitude of different subtleties within their style that wouldn’t otherwise be noticeable on one of the shorter tracks. Whilst Vicarage‘s discography is limited in length, this is a stand-out piece amongst it already.
Title track ‘Perfect Hatred’ is one of the two singles that have already been released, alongside third track ‘In Penitence’. The former is a study in abrasive hardcore that rips and flails in reckless abandon, and the latter is actually somehow more aggressive out of the gates. Both songs feel all too eager to take a lump out of the listener, especially towards the end of “In Penitence” whereby Vicarage may actually be encouraging an all-out brawl, although that remains to be seen as the writer has sadly not yet seen them live.
EP finale ‘Be Thou Clean’ is fit to bursting with moments of dizzying heaviness and unrelenting rancour. Coming in under three minutes long, it has been rammed full of nihilistic vigour and can likely strip paint at a distance. In what has been a suitably ferocious quarter of an hour, this comes as a particularly rampant finish, and wraps up the world’s first proper introduction to Vicarage. With the iciness of black metal woven into the face pounding aggression of hardcore, and the misanthropic tendencies of both amplified, the Perfect Hatred EP is not for the faint of heart, but will certainly have plenty of satisfied fans.