Now, this is more like it! Originally released in 2008 to general ignorance and given a fresh chance at life by Candlelight, Disensitise is the sound of a once-awesome band rediscovering itself after a long period of absence. Sure, Hear Nothing See Nothing Say Nothing will always be Discharge’s and indeed the entire genre’s pinnacle, but something of that raw thrashy intensity comes across well in Disensitise, if it suffers in direct comparison. Vocalist Rat has a fairly typical hardcore bellow that isn’t quite as empty-eyed and tormented as Cal’s, for one, and as a whole Disensitise is a little slower and less intense than that legendary album’s brimstone and hellfire politickin’. Yet, and here’s what really surprised me, this nonetheless shows off a Discharge that can still make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

Disensitise is far more varied than you’d expect, with the two/three-minute song lengths leaving more room for exploration of the band’s admittedly one-note sound. Of special interest to metalheads will be the extra thrashiness audible in the riffs and guitar tone overall, giving this the air of one of those ‘true thrash’ bands from the underground that people discover, get excited about, and then forget as abruptly. There are dual guitar lines as well, which gives the music that bit of extra heaviness necessary to cross the dreaded punk line and give the rampaging chugs their bite. There’s even audible bass! And the solos! Shrieking, wailing, howling screeches of guitar that will have any thrasher worth their salt in glee.

Downpoints, of course, exist. Songwriting is pretty samey, and the drums are simplistic to the point of obnoxiousness. Yet this sort of music is about the overall image rather than the individual details, the rush of cathartic fury, the outrage so well-summed up at the policemen on the stark cover (far better than the original’s rather dated broken tv screen) tormenting the citizen. Anarchism may be the political ideology most easy to dismiss as teenage angst written large, but it’s also one of the purest, and one of the most fitting for a musical genre that basically translates as ‘fuck off, pigs!’ with riffs. Crust punk is best absorbed in small doses, and at forty-two-minutes Discharge are pushing it here, yet Candlelight still deserve kudos for ensuring that this band’s latter-day efforts are heard by as many people as possible.