SLOI - s/t LP (LUNGS-198) Italy has never had a shortage of ripping hardcore bands and SLOI is no exception. Featuring members of IMPULSO, TUONO and ASTIO, SLOI execute furious D-beat hardcore punk, channeling the clamorous spirit of legends past, such as WRETCHED, NEGAZIONE, INDIGESTI and STIGMATHE. They don’t let their influences overshadow their own work, however, which is firmly rooted in the eternal state of horrifying affairs. Hailing from Trento, SLOI take their name from a lead factory that poisoned the area over 40 years ago, called Società Lavorazioni Organiche Inorganiche. Many of its workers died of lead poisoning, while others took their own life in the Pergine Asylum, where they were being treated as mentally ill. SLOI vocalize seven nightmarish tracks in their native tongue, arguably one of the finest languages for spiting out hardcore punk, and each one will have you gripping the edge of your seat in white-knuckled fury. Swaying between full-blow D-beat assaults, complete with wall-of-noise fuzz, and pit-and-pogo ready bangers to satisfy your knuckle-dragging urges, they possess a razor-sharp production that is satisfyingly noisy and reverbed. In turn, each track assembles some of the finest features of the genre, hitting hard with nail-biting intensity: the drums crash on you like a pound of bricks, the guitars manically pace between savage riffs and crunchy chords you can sink your teeth into, and the bass is laid down throbbing and thick, pounding at your chest like an shock wave from a lead factory that’s just collapsed in a fire. Atop the wreckage stand SLOI, along with a cohort of peers currently flying the black flag of Italian hardcore resistance. (Lydia Athanasopoulou)