Just when I thought that hardcore punk had been squeezed of every last drop of creativity, this recent eruption of bands mining the early 80's American HC sound has been kicking my ass, bands like Total Abuse, Cult Ritual, Drunkdriver, Slices, Brain Handle, and Walls all delivering ferocious fast hardcore with a heavy helping of NOISE that gives this classic sound an apocalyptic update. This band from Saint Louis (now apparently relocated to the New England area) called Praey has joined these ranks with a bitch of an EP that just came out on Realicide Youth. The trio includes Mavis Concave, a member of Realicide who has also released some solo extreme gabber/noise material, but there's none of the DIY gabber that I usually associate with Realicide Youth going on here; Praey play fast, spastic hardcore, recorded raw and in-the-red, a furious primal thrash attack that draws heavily from old 80's hardcore. I'm specifically hearing the gnarled, ultrafast thrash of bands like Deep Wound, FU's and Siege in here, but these guys crank the feedback and gain to sickoid levels, smearing harsh high-end skree and wailing noise over the distorted three-chord riffs. Eight tracks of this gets my adrenaline jacked. A blast of horrendous noise opens the disc, which tears straight into the jarring hardcore thrash of "Banker's Glove", brutal out-of-tune riffage over sloppy thrashing drums, weaving into a pummeling slow breakdown before taking off again. "But How" is a slow brooding dirge with ripped-throat vox and messed up detuned guitar racket that slips into fields of improvised guitar noise and feedback and free-improv, then "Objective Subjective" blares through a minute of blistering high speed aggression. The cover of Negative Approach's "Pressure" unleashes frantic thrash and sputtering free noise, and "Dead End Touch", one of the discs longest tracks, is a stumbling mess of tribal drumming and spoken vox that segues into screaming and chirpy tape noise, then slips into a crushing slo-mo Melvins-y dirge. "Freeze Frame"s blazing thrash is mixed with crashing metallic percussion, and Praey's cover of Realicide's "Shit For Reality" reformats the songs as a total circle pit inciter with a huge sing along chorus and fucked up Ginn-esque riffing, starting out as early 80's hardcore mania, but then evolving into a blasting improv noise freak-out. The disc ends with a couple of shredded live recordings, closing the EP in a blur of broken strings and drumsticks and bloody lips and black eyes. It's like a hybrid of Deep Wound and Prurient, sort of. Definitely noisy as hell, and fast and fucked up and FIERCE. Packaged in screenprinted/xeroxed sleeve, includes a fold-out poster and vinyl sticker, and limited to 150 copies.