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Aggressive fast hardcore Umea, Sweden Leper follow up their 2017 demo with a 9 track LP.
Simple as that - no metal guitars, no sludge parts, just raw and pure hardcore-punk with only one of those songs clocking in over 2 minutes. The record is housed in a nice 350g cover with an inlay and the first
100 copies are on limited red vinyl with black innersleeves and 400 copies on black vinyl with red innersleeves.
Our take: Frail Life is the debut vinyl from Leper, who are from the unlikely but perennial hardcore hotbed of Umeå, Sweden. When I first checked out Leper, the Choke-esque vocals and bruising sound made me think this would be full-on skinhead hardcore a la Violent Reaction or Boston Strangler, and while there’s plenty of that here, it’s more varied than you might expect. In particular, there are lots of little melodic rock and roll guitar flourishes (see “ICBM,” for instance) and the dissonant Greg Ginn chords of “P&D,” which is a welcome diversion from the rest of the album’s more straightforward vibe. Throw in some eye-catching artwork and you have a standout hardcore record.