It would be easy to wile away an hour or six pinpointing the influences that lurk behind Beastmilk’s voyage into bleak post-punk realms, but the truth is that they’re a fearsome proposition with a distinctive personality of their own.
Climax is an album of cold shadows and harrowing uncertainties as brittle riffing, clangourous reverb and the purposeful thud of tribal percussive mantras collide. Fast, furious and threatening on the mad-eyed canter of The Wind Blows Through Their Skulls and the Bunnymen-in-Hell slap-to-the-chops of Nuclear Winter, Beastmilk are plainly exorcising demons, but this is not just an exercise in venting bile.
Instead, they whip up a pulsating, monochrome squall that, despite a superficial kinship with indie-friendly fare like Editors and Savages, belongs firmly in the realms of unconventional heaviness. It ends with the horrified and horrifying Strange Attractors, the finest moment here and a song that highlights the endless potential in Beastmilk’s harangued and hopeless worldview via a shimmering wall of drug-induced fever dreams and flagellated guitars.
