Escalate – Demo 2020

Artist: Escalate

Title: Demo 2020

Release: EP / Digital

Year: 2020

Label: Self-Released

Well, first of all, it feels great to review a new band from Hungary! Released in December 2020, Veszprém’s Escalate deliver four tracks that are so flooded with rage it feels like they could tear apart at the seams.

Aggressive riffs and pounding breakdowns start delivering energy charges from the very first seconds of the instrumental intro. An incendiary straight edge affair really begins to unfold with the introduction of the singer’s harsh, Holy Terror-influenced vocals on second track “Years in Ruin”, a song about all those years people have wasted on drugs and alcohol. The band obviously has an attitude that fits their furious ’90s influenced hardcore sound, pulling a heap of metal influences into the mix. Add to that a rough-sounding production and I believe you’re in it for a treat.

All songs on this record are really short, clocking in at around the minute and a half mark in a SECT-like fashion. My personal highlight is the vegan-edge belter “9th Kingdom”, where the metallic riffs, vicious vocals and double-bass savagery evoke all the mosh power and brutality you could ask for. The lyrics are also as uncompromisingly militant as it gets, because you can’t just turn a blind eye to the atrocities against our fellow non-human earthlings. The last track “Cruel Traditions” keeps the vegan lyrical theme as well as the level of speed and intensity up to the last closing breakdowns of the demo.

Escalate sound raw, hectic and mean as hell with a sheer relentlessness you can’t easily ignore. If you have been following the XVX scene in the last couple of years with bands like xRepentancex, xELEGYx, Moral Law, and World of Pleasure, you would love this brand new Hungarian band too.

Ignorance is not bliss, it’s a fucking crime

You keep the cogs spinning, chose the oppressors’ side

Vegan straight edge, step up!

Source: diyconspiracy.net