CONCERT: Discharge (UK)

“Can you hear the sound of an enormous door slamming in the depths of hell…?”

Not only is this the chilling description given of a nuclear detonation during one of the sound-bite samples on the first Discharge album, but it’s also a perfect description of the Stoke, UK-based punk band that turned the world of underground music on its head with their primal bursts of uncompromising speed and aggression.

Formed in the late Seventies Discharge changed the face of punk – and indeed extreme music itself – with their stunning ‘Realities Of War’ EP, a four-song outpouring of pure intensity that boiled punk down to its basic components of rage, frustration and violent rebellion. Discharge stumbled upon a sound that was so ugly, it was beautiful; so horrifying, it was irresistible – and it ushered in a whole new wave of gnarlier, nastier UK punk, and ultimately paved the way for hardcore and thrash.

The onslaught continued with classic release after classic release, each more devastating than the previous: the five-track ‘Fight Back’ EP, which saw the band fusing anarcho-punk anti-war sentiment to their incendiary noise, the ‘Decontrol’ 7”, which is probably still the most brutal punk single ever released, and the incredible – in its sheer unrelenting viciousness – ‘Why?’ 12”. Of course there were the inevitable line-up changes, too many to even start to list over the years, but undeterred the band released their debut LP, ‘Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing’, in 1982, a towering feat of musical aggression that smashed its way into the UK charts and saw the band travelling the world, spreading their virulent sonic disease

Discharge are seemingly unstoppable, and a thousand bands spawned in their wake, making them one of the few bands to have fathered their very own genre, Discore or D-Beat as it’s now widely known around the world. Many of the songs from the band’s formative years have been covered by some of the biggest names in rock and metal music: Metallica, Anthrax, Sepultura, Machine Head, Prong, Soulfly, Arch Enemy to name but a few... all of them keen to tip their hat to this ground-breaking band, but all of them coming up short when it comes to capturing the same kind of primal ferocity.

In 2016 , Discharge signed to Nuclear Blast Records, to unleash their single 'New World Order', and the aptly-titled album ‘End Of Days’ which reached #10 in The Official UK Rock Charts and have been playing to sold out crowds in America and in Europe.