Portland's Deathcharge started off as another in a long line of Discharge-worshipping crust bands, but over the past couple of years the band had begun to reveal another obsession, a lust for the darkest strain of 80's death rock and UK goth that first started to infect their music in earnest on their 2005 Ep The Hangman / New Dark Age . That two song 7" didn't sound like anybody else at the time that it came out, with a terminally dark, driving sound that slowed down their bulldozing crust to a more rocking tempo, coloring the crushing hardcore with a brooding goth rock vibe that was especially apparent in the singer's newfound baritone croon reminiscent of Sisters Of Mercy's Andrew Eldritch. It would be another six years before Deathcharge would follow that 7" up with a new release, their first full length Lp in fact, which came out on Unseen Forces a few months ago. That Lp sold out almost immediately and it's taken a couple of months for a repress to appear, but now we've got this amazing album of grim, goth-influenced crust in stock and it's been dominating my stereo all month, with a pretty good shot at being in my top five favorite records of '11.

At it's filthy black heart, Deathcharge's sound is rooted in the sort of grimy Discharge/Motorhead metalpunk that I never get tired of listening to, with crushing D-beat drumming driving the vicious punk riffs and dystopian atmosphere. That's exactly what you get when the first song kicks in, a dirty, rocking blast of crusty hardcore, but then the vocals come in, and if you hadn't heard the Hangman 7", it's a surprise - a moaning, affected death rock croon that throughout the album reminds me of a strange mix of Andrew Eldritch, hardcore howl, and Richard Butler from the Psychedelic Furs (the latter especially on the very last song) that sounds incredibly cool and distinctive against the raging hardcore. The second song has a little more of a classic death rock vibe, with tribal drums and effects-heavy guitar and spiky, serpentine bass, and when the band kicks into the rocking verse, the guitar leads have this killer menacing sound that reminds me of Rikk Agnew's playing on Christian Death's Only Theatre Of Pain. There are also interesting dark ambient passages of rumbling Lustmordian drift and ominous voices that are used to segue into more of the dark metallic punk. Flipping over to side two, we're hit with what has become my favorite song on the album (which is untitled, as are all of the songs on the Lp), a ripping deathrock/crust anthem with those moaning vocals and some of the album's catchiest melodies, here more than ever sounding like a fusion of early Sisters Of Mercy and dark crust punk. That's followed by another blast of ferocious hardcore, with swooping flanging effects all over the lead guitar that also throws off some killer bluesy metal shredding, and the last couple of songs are a mix of all of this, some more fist-pumping mid tempo punk aggression, speedy crusty thrash, brief pitch-black drones that bring us to the stirring heavy death rock of the final song.

Deathcharge manages to bring these sounds together in a way that doesn't come off as pastiche to me, but also hits all my buttons with it's fusion of catchy rocking gloom and hardcore power. It's one of the most interesting hardcore punk albums that I've heard all year, and I don't see my self taking this off of the turntable anytime soon...