Helpless – Debt (Review)

Helpless are a UK hardcore/grindcore band and this is their debut album.

Here we have 22 minutes of intense grinding mayhem. It’s feral and violent, but not without a dangerous intelligence.

The music on Debt takes aspects of punk, metal, powerviolence, hardcore, and dissonant harshness into its grindcore embrace.

This is nasty, abrasive stuff; just the kind of thing I can’t help but love. The songs are short and brutally effective, providing the listener with enough of a vicious barbarous assault to knock them over.

There’s more than just the savagery here though, and the band also show that they’re capable of adding nuance and depth to their music. This is not straightforward grindcore, but more of a hybrid style that also contains influences from bands such as Converge and Norma Jean, meaning that Helpless may bring the pain, but they also think about what they’re doing and how they can best inflict their damage.

So yes, if you take Norma Jean’s inhumanly heavy and nasty debut album, add in elements of bands like Converge, Nails, and Botch, throw in a bit of dissonance, then you’ll have a decent idea of where Debt is coming from.

As I said earlier – I love this kind of nasty, aggressive music, especially when it’s played and performed as well as it is here, with both style and substance. Helpless are extremely impressive, and Debt is your latest furious love affair waiting to happen.