"Every genre splinters and flowers out from it's original starting point and hardcore is no exception, mutating fractally out from its supercharged punk roots, twisting through trends, evolutions and regressions, crashing back in on itself until you end up with an international sprawl of scenes and subscenes, styles within styles, odd misshapen fusions and hellbent worship bands.    If you were looking for a sound that could encapsulate the myriad forms that hardcore takes in 2018 one could do a lot worse than slam a record on by ZODD, who have emerged from the vibrant Singapore punk/hardcore scene in the wake of bands like Vaarallinen, Sial and Lubricant. Operationally Ready Dead have an approach based in a vicious pogo-thump but drawing in elements of hardcore's various strands, echoing screams ripping painfully through chomping riffs, weird enough for the freakpunx, hard enough for the mosh kids, chaotic and blown out, squealing and stumbling, but never losing it's dynamism, ten tracks of contemporary anxiety shaped into hardcore anger, apocalyptic angst, psychopaths with uniforms and without, society's born corrupt, getting darker still. ZODD provide a searing soundtrack to this and more. DYSTOPIAN FUTURE IS NOW.       Operationally Ready Dead front cover was designed by Nicky Rat and it comes with a lyric insert designed by the band." Our take: Debut vinyl from this new band out of Singapore, a country which has brought us a noteworthy number of killer hardcore bands over the past few years. The thing that amazes me about a lot of these bands from Singapore is that they seem so “on trend” for the styles that are popular in America. Asia seems like such a distant place, and the fact that the music that comes from there sounds a little alien is part of the appeal of tracking down these records. It takes me away from my mundane reality and reminds me we live in a huge world. However, Zodd could be from Los Angeles or London or Toronto just as easily as Singapore. There’s some kind of vestigial colonial impulse to say Zodd is influenced by western bands like Blazing Eye, S.H.I.T., and Bib, but Operationally Ready Dead doesn’t sound like a copy of those bands, but rather an extension of the same conversation. If that’s a conversation you’re following then you’ll have no problem noodle moshing to this one in your bedroom.
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