Discharge

“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 toweri