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We’re proud to announce the debut recordings by Haarlem’s Traumatizer. This is blistering D-beat with a handful of huge, metallic riffing and a vocalist that eats nails for dessert. There’s a blown-out production that brings to mind Bootlicker’s earlier recordings but where the Lickers line American Hardcore with No Future stomp, Traumatizer goes full tilt into the noize and grips you by the throat. There’s no pogo present, just rage and violence. Toss it on while you take the late-night walk home from the bar. These 6 tracks will make a compelling case that those darting eyes and high hackles in the alleyway are the threat you were worried about. Those focused pupils from an animal whose only option is to take as many of you with them as they can. You didn’t even mean any harm, poor you. But here we are, kill or be killed. Prey or predator. No one gets out alive, we just measure blood loss for points.
Our take: While I associate Neon Taste Records with the punkier sounds of bands like Chain Whip and the Imploders, they have a pretty solid sideline in gnarlier sounds, of which this debut 7" from the Dutch band Traumatizer is a fine example. The core of Traumatizer’s sound is rampaging, everything-in-the-red d-beat, with at least a toe in the corner of this sound where it meets tougher, graffiti-letter type hardcore. The pedal is on the floor for the entire first two tracks, but when they get to their theme song “Traumatizer,” the style widens with a cool, John Carpenter-through-a-fuzzbox synth intro and some Death Side-esque lead guitar histrionics. The straightforward parts will peel paint, but it’s the subtler moments in these six rippers that really catch my ear.