[Review] BRUXIST - Self-Titled LP.
Words: Brady Irwin
Outsider perspectives on Australia as ‘the lucky country’ are more inherently tied to tropes about the place during pre-GFC years, when everything from affordable housing through to the mining boom gave our nation a reputation for livability, safeness and prosperity.
Fact is, though, dig beneath anything superficial and it’s no wonder we’re a country capable of producing pissed-off, cathartic music. With structural divides now approaching the very Marxist-boogeyman classism the neo-conservatives always had their knickers in such a twist over, it’s in honesty not the most friendly at times to those on the fringe, the outsider, the other.
Furthermore, typically where press releases, promotional materials and the like are concerned, my blackened Aussie-who-doesn’t-feel-that-Aussie heart is emboldened with nationalistic pride seeing more diverse, underground music boomeranging back via international industry reps.
Heartily catching one particularly strongly in these crust-loving hands is latest effort from Aussie supergroup Bruxist, with their brief but bruising, gnarled panoply of seethe via latest self-titled LP, which dropped back in April, but also saw physical (cassette) release on the 19th July. Props to Gutter Prince Cabal for getting this solid unit of an album out into the world!
It’s no surprise to me, especially not in the gargantuan clusterfuck that is 2025, that the increasingly oppressive socioeconomic atmosphere (gentrification in tandem with decreased opportunity, etc) Down Under has spurned such a tasty meat-pie of crust, d-beat, hardcore and even a tinge of Scandinavian black metal pepper to boot.
Our lineup for today’s review is truly Venemous Concept in, well, concept!
Sporting Dav Byrne (of Encircling Sea/Clagg/Cement Pig/YLVA fame, among others) on bass/backing vocals, Dan Nahum (of the excellent Altars, plus Bleakwood, Futility etc) on drums and finally, guitarist-vocalist Terry Vainoras (known for the absolutely whack Subterranean Disposition, et al), you know you’ve got a power-trio in tow here.
Much akin to fellow Melburnians Resistance, the all-in triumvirate vocal attack works like a charm throughout the album. That said, ‘Inversion’ kicks off proceedings with a riff that wouldn’t look too out of place on a Dismember record, bouncing with punkish fury before pivoting about-face into some blackened tremolo amidst the fret-bounce over gargled-glass rasps. Clocking in at just two and a half minutes, it’s martial and consistent in pace but not without slivers of Northern frostbite. Perfect for current temperatures down here in Victoria, honestly!
‘Six Feet Headfirst’ asks the ambitious of a modern listener audience, with a whole 3 min 15 sec runtime. Within that span of time, there’s an incredible mangling of all those aforementioned influences, like a drunkards’ extreme-metal china laid atop a primarily punk/d-beat pacing. Don’t let that lull you into thinking the pace keeps at a 4/4 stomp, though - punctuating the rocksteady beat are some serpentine snarls of controlled chaos, brief lashings of blasts to keep you alert throughout. D-beat/crust are genres often semantically associated with loosey-goosey playing, but the sheer tightness and precision here lends itself insanely well. Veterancy is firmly on display so far!
Stomping like a drunk bogan denied entry on happy hour, the slowed swagger of the second track gives way to exactly what you’d expect shortly thereafter. Or perhaps not? ‘Black Sheep Discipline’ forgoes another run into fasty-blasty, hanging loose with an intro reminiscent of latter-day Converge, jangled chords from Terry with an appreciable Ballou hat-tip. This mingles nicely with the immovable stoicism of the Dav/Dan bass/drumming duo, some playful blackened chords Kvelertak-style before it’s heads-down, bums-up for a faster blast of black-thrash whiplash towards the songs’ end. Seriously, this LP’s one to thrust under the nose of that snob in a 1349 shirt you’ve been trying to get into heck, anything else - you can let ‘em know even the gang-chants have an appreciable black-metal sneer.
And if they still swirl their cognac in a skull and turn the nose upwards, their loss I guess. You can continue on with the feedback-drenched mayhem that is ‘Wide Awake’, commiserating on their behalf as things take a much more extreme-metal bent. Sharpening the corpse-paint influence to a stabbing point, this is two minutes of tremolo-laden riffage punctuated by that Discharge-lovin’ crust stomp and even a bluesy little run to get the toxic-masculine blokes a little more uncomfortable.
As the muffled spoken-word ebbs out on that prison-shiv of a track, ‘Piss and Vinegar’ trips over one of the wardens and truly escalates the riot to full-scale. Rocking up with a Blood Duster sixer tucked under one arm, we’re treated to a bit of vocal swap-sies and guttural chants to completely posturing-free rocking riffage. Oh, what’s this now? The metaphorical fizz of breakdown-beers, as a slow chugger of a riff melds slightly into janky, spindly His Hero is Gone/Himsa style fret bounciness. Yet another demonstration of how much collective riff-wisdom can be incorporated into a short runtime.
‘Revoked’ aims for the prog-stars, but only in terms of a slightly longer track and only in context to the crust/d-beat genre. Daring to be bold and run for as long as nearly five minutes (woah!), it’s around this part of the album that the almost incessant steady rhythmic risks becoming a bit too familiar. Fortunately, there’s a few tweaks and adjustments to the who-and-what on vocal delivery, riff-work, etc, to prevent that happening. It bears noting that whilst as buried under mountainous fuzz as any good crust bassist should be, it’s not like Dav and Dan aren’t bringing as much subtle flair as they can underneath the exploratory, jagged guitar-work from their guitarist compadre. The push-pull of this tracks’ latter half, which feels like The Jesus Lizard on both cocaine and heavy barbiturates, helps break things up nicely.
Much like what feels like every review you’ll read of any album ever, by any band familiarised with format, there’s no gold stars involved for guessing how ‘Divide and Conquer’ plays out. Emphasising both the black-n-roll, staccato blasts cause fuck-you-why-not and snarling punk/hardcore bemusement, everyone involved gets a vocal and instrumental say on a culminating track filled with more limelight for our rhythm heroes, between Terry’s riff-ADHD. What I appreciated most about this one was how there’s a couple of false-finish moments, i.e. a couple of big breakdowns (one of them just absolutely drenched in thick, soupy bass-fuzz, yum) that imply they’re finished, and yet the track just sneaks in more kaleidoscopic helpings of their influences, wrapping up in some gnarly growls and nimble, flashy riffage before one last punk-rock hurrah.
Honestly? It’ll take you longer to read this review than it will to listen to Bruxist in full. And that’s fine! In a day and age where half of what’s coming out in the extreme metal scene is desperately clamouring to outdo say, Demilich or whoever, it truly is refreshing to crack open a tinnie of crusty d-beat and be surprised with both Swedish and Norwegian influences throughout.
If this is how things are looking for Bruxist from here on? Mate, I’m farkin’ keen to cop both this one in a live setting and cop more supergroup-antics from these three legends.
Enter for the punk-fun, stay for the metalhead dynamics.
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p.s. shoutout to Devil Horns Zine for this fantastic in-depth interview with Terry on Youtube - highly recommended:
Peace, Love, and Trust in Crust xoxo - Brady.