Kritiek

KRITIEK is HC/Punk band from Ghent, Belgium. With their debut album, the members of the Ghent band KRITIEK burst onto the ever-noisy Hardcore Punk scene like a runaway bulldozer. A (sub)genre that refuses to die, 45 years after its conception. And that's a good thing. In ten furious tracks, Kritiek delivers a razor-sharp album that wastes no time on subtleties. Uptempo frenzy in its purest form, without too many compromises. From the opener Survival, the angry tone is set: angry, biting and full speed ahead. The song immediately reveals the band's preferred tools: turbo-fast drums, screeching guitars and sandpaper vocals that seem to come from the throat of someone who has been screaming at the walls of a basement for years. The band flirts here and there with metal accents that make the whole thing a bit heavier and more menacing, but without straying from the path of classic Hardcore Punk. Fans of Discharge, and by extension the entire UK82 scene, will find more than enough to enjoy here. What stands out is the impressive tempo: eight of the ten songs blast through your speakers in under two minutes, with an intensity that is almost impossible to grasp. But despite the dizzying speed, everything remains on point and tightly played, as if the chaos has been carefully calibrated. The emotional range of the album fluctuates somewhere between angry and furious — a constant stream of frustration and social criticism. Each song is a hard punch in the face of apathy and widespread injustice, delivered energetically with something akin to pure conviction. This debut sounds like a masterclass in comb-over Hardcore: loud, brutal and unapologetic in its pursuit of catharsis.

Demo (2024)

01 - Survival
02 - Hounded
03 - Die And Let Live

Kritiek (2025)

01 - Survival
02 - Toxic Levels
03 - 2052
04 - Entitled
05 - Count Me Out
06 - Prison Bars
07 - Bought And Sold
08 - Four More Years
09 - Die And Let Live
10 - Hounded

pass: freepunk77