20 Buck Spin, home to brilliant releases by the likes of Black Boned Angel, Whitehorse and Mrtyu!, forages onto more hardcore territory with ?Primitive? by The Endless Blockade from Toronto. Clocking in at about 21 minutes, ?Primitive? is rather an ep, but that?s time enough for thirteen songs, only three of which are longer than two minutes. It?s the Blockade?s second lp, following up their debut ?Turn Illness Into a Weapon? and a handful of eps and split lps.

Which shouldn?t come as a surprise as The Endless Blockade deal in stock hardcore fare with mosh parts, heavy riffing, ultra-highspeed drumming and spoken word samples that are reason enough to play, from time to time, my old S.O.D. cd. ?Primitive? adds some twisted electronics to that equation and generally leans more towards the genre?s btutal side. The Ryker?s and the superstar project Venomous Concept from a few years ago come to mind as these guys from Toronto are letting off steam in tracks like ?Pig Life?, ?Thick Skin, Transparent Blood? and ?Resuscitation?. Inviting Jello Biafra in for a five-second-track and naming another track ?Irrationalism uber alles?, The Endless Blockade know what they?re doing, and they do it well. If they should ever tour my part of the world, I?d definitely try to see them. But I?ve begun to wonder whether this kind of music simply isn?t heavy enough to live up to all the energy, pressure and vitality that it transpires. 6/10 -- Jan-Arne Sohns (20 May, 2008)