The Lowest Form’s Hardcore Punk Comes From a Damp and Dark Place

Personal Space​ is the second album from hardcore heavies The Lowest Form and continues the pan-UK band's foray into miserable and troubled punk.

Recorded over two years, and a follow up to the excellent Negative Ecstasy album that was also released on US label Iron Lung​, the 10-tracks here burn with a buckled despair. It's a music that is simple, bleak and thuggish but is a style and approach that has served some of the best hardcore bands - from Negative Approach and Gauze to Rival Mob - well.

Band members include Michael Kasparis who runs the excellent Glagsow label Night School​ (Liberation​, CC Dust) and plays in the industrial strength synth punk project Apostile and bassist Luke Younger whose projects include Helm and Birds Of Delay. But here the bleakness is turned up ten-fold.

Is "Gak Attack" the 2016 East London version of Poison Idea's "Smack Attack"​? Maybe not, but it still burns like pepper spray and "Dread Future" is a track of dire agitation. It captures that feeling of travelling with the sweats on the Tube or public transport with people getting too close for comfort. Starting with some thudding drums, vocalist Chris Bress takes over and snaps into the kind of violent fit that has frightened onlookers reaching for their phone cameras.

Personal Space is an essential punk release of 2016.

'Personal Space' is available now on Iron Lung​. ​​

Catch something from the Lowest Form: 
Nov 11 - Manchester at The Star and Garter
Nov 13 - Edinburgh at Banshee Labyrinth

Listen to bands like The Lowest Form on Tim Scott's radio show Teenage Hate​​​.​​ ​​​​​

​Image: YouTube