When I was a teenager I had a friend whose father went to prison for assault with a deadly weapon. When he got out his wife left him so he rented his own place. The house was barren save a mattress and a tower of VB cases stacked with empty stubbies against the wall. There was no electricity and the place stank like a dead vagrant. The lawn out back was a forest of weeds and Paterson’s curse, with deflated goon bags draped over the clothes line. This guy would piss and vomit wherever he wanted, but he’d also buy us booze and cigarettes. He’d lost the plot.

This record reminds me of that guy. It’s a miserable and angry thing, totally ruined and ugly. If the song ‘Mob Reality’ was a person its face would be nothing but broken vessels from years of cheap booze abuse. It’d have no teeth and tell you sick stories.

This four-piece have been the scariest band in Sydney for a while, but early tracks like ‘Cop Scum’ were far too catchy to be this menacing. Now Whores are just a malignant punch in the face with brown-glass knuckle dusters, all barbed feedback and stripped screams that make mere disenfranchisement sound as terrible as a chipped coffee mug. This is hatred in totality. Total bile. Five stars.