Album review: Going Off – Die Fast

Getting caught in a mosh is a feeling that’s infamously difficult to replicate on record. If there’s one quality that sets Mancunian hardcore lot Going Off apart, it’s that their music feels (very nearly) as reckless and unpredictable crashing into your head from a pair of headphones as it does being let loose from the PA in some dingy dive bar.

Second album Die Fast picks up where last February’s debut What Makes You Tick? and December’s frantic Kill List EP left off – just with the swollen confidence of more months’ on the road and a shade of additional spit-and-shine. Push To Shove opens proceedings with 69 seconds of gnashing energy and two-step attitude. Cowards ramps up the crossover-thrash energy while finding time for a leftfield Dumb & Dumber sample. Horrors slows things down a little, with some real knuckle-swelling bludgeon. But before long they're in borderline grindcore territory with 1000mph highlight Blue and six-second punctuation mark Xylazine.

Singling out individual tracks is somewhat redundant, of course. This is a(nother) record so fast and furious you’ll have little choice but to swallow it whole. Pay attention and catch a smattering of guest spots: choice among them Lexi Reyngoudt of Buffalo upstarts Spaced on The Game and Pierre Mendivil of UKHC stalwarts Knuckledust pumping up penultimate banger Feed. But by the time punky closer Nervous Breakdown smashes through, chances are you won’t know what hit you. But you'll like it.

Verdict: 3/5

For fans of: Gallows, Scowl, Gulch

Die Fast is released on April 26