Bomberna Faller Fanzine

Ultimate Disaster released a great demo tape on Acute Noise Manufacture just last year and now it's time for the album debute. Released by Grave Mistake Records in the states and Kick Rock here in Europe, 'For Progress' (...There Is No Cure) feels like a very nice blend of Disclose and, sure, a bit of Discharge with an end result remarkably similar to Glorious?. The way the lyrics are structured is reminiscent of Disclose, but the sound is cleaner. When reading on Grave Mistake Records' bandcamp some of the lyrics are said to reflect today's algorithmic surveillance which had me very excited because punks are finally starting to acknowledge the rise of the data feudalism and how big tech is fucking even the punk scene with minimal resistance (another band that recently talked about this was Zyphilis). But when reading the lyrics, I couldn't figure out which track they refered to, making me suspect they just repeated what the band told them the album is about.

I wanted to get the red version because I'm a sucker for colored vinyl, but alas the only one left when I had the money for it was the black one. It's, as stated above, released by Kick Rock in Europe but naturally shows up in other distros and labels as well - I got mine from Phobia as part of a larger order including Exploatör (I'll get to that one in a few days). There's no question what genre it is when looking at the cover and lyric sheet, the use of a big bold sans-serif for the titles paired with a typewriter font for the lyrics and striking black and white imagery makes it feel almost classic even though I know it's from this year. The layout is credited to "Alex D" and I think it's no big leap to assume it's Alex Dust (Disease/Bipolar/Attack Warning Red/Stalinstadt/Smog etc) which would explain why the familiar d-beat hardcore aesthetic is so competently represented.

I have no prior knowledge of the band members but I suspect they've been playing this kind of music before forming Ultimate Disaster, because it's very well done. Not a single chord or drum beat is out of place (that I could pick up on, anyway), which makes me think both "This is how it's done!" and "Go on, turn it up to eleven! Go bananas!" at the same time. There's a lot of good tracks here, my favorites being 'Tomorrow's Genocide' and 'March To Oblivion'. But the total length is a bit short, I must confess I wanted more when the needle reached the middle on the B side. Then again, I could always just flip the record and start over!

After listening to this album for the better part of a week now I can conclude that it's such a solid piece of d-beat hardcore that people might even consider it a classic in the future, which some already do (even though their interview questions was painfully generic). The only track I didn't think was that great was the closing one, 'Hymn For A Burning World', and loving eight out of nine tracks is pretty great, wouldn't you agree?

Ultimate Disaster - For Progress...