- We’re getting dangerous with numerology again here folks: Geld have put their name on their third record three times in. Geld is another word for both currency and for castration so along with the band name, it’s a threepeat. I’m sure there’s an allusion there for someone who's more familiar with the most famous Young Hegelian, who’d crack a wry smile at the correlation between money and castration. However, he would immediately shit his britches upon copping an aural blast from the record and a Rob Van Damn inspired spin kick from mosher monsters at the live show. Now joining the international big dog roster of Relapse Records, the Naarm / Melbourne quartet have let fly premier hardcore with enough flair to impress the grumpy oldheads.

Hardcore remains an ouroboros of a genre due to the D.I.Y aesthetics’ being so deeply embedded that success and deviation can spell death. In that case, Geld might as well be the reaper because encased in these rapid rampages, stringent hardcore boundaries are rent asunder. Currency has a jam band aesthetic as it wanders around in an agitated angst and it's not until Chained to a Gate, a third of the way through, that the band kicks into top gear.

From here, and for a better part of the record, torrid guitars careen with reckless abandon like dickhead kids egging on their mate to jump from the roof into a pool. Acting as violent reminders as to why hardcore fucking rules, the chunky boy bass that populates both Clock Keeps Calling and Fog of War tickles that adolescent part of my brain. Staying in Fog of War, the dial-back-from-chaos approach makes it one of the catchiest songs on the record. Everything has more time to breathe and the more flamboyant guitar work tucked just inside the chaos is a great lesson on how to work within the strict bounds.

Geld do quite well in manipulating the genre constraints. Across A Broad Plain makes a prelude for the melody in Hanging From A Rope with a distorted mess of power electronics. Success ignites a blistering pub rock solo before swallowing itself in a reversed outro like the ouroboros I mentioned earlier and Castration is a mellow plod you’d expect on an alien-obsessed death metal record. The last real blitz is from Secret Prison, a powerviolence rip, replete with furious fretboard fireworks.

You can’t blame Geld for putting their name Currency // Castration three times because if arrogance is earned confidence, this record earns the Melbourne group confidence in droves. There’s something special in this record and if joining Relapse puts these guys on the international map, it’s well and truly deserved.

- Matt Lynch.