by Cam Harper
Toronto hardcore juggernauts S.H.I.T. are back with their bone-crushing new album For A Better World, a collection of seven loathing anthems that wriggle into loosened eardrums with relentless determination. After forming in 2012, the band spent some years focusing their output towards demos, EPs, live sessions, and singles, slowly building the way for their first LP, What Do You Stand For?, released in 2018. In recent years the band returned to offloading explosive raw punk in EP form before finalizing For A Better World over a decade after the band first came into existence. S.H.I.T. does great work maintaining a slippery stream of releases while honing their sound for each LP, refusing to succumb to any sense of pressure or expectation. The new album features two tracks from the band’s most recent demo, released in early 2023, and five new tracks all encapsulated in album artwork that emits a baleful green glow.
Recorded during the Great Northern American Eclipse this past April, the production on For A Better World favors instrumental symbiosis over undisguised aggression. Pulverizing riffage is at the core of S.H.I.T.'s music, with vocal performances that sound like they are being delivered by a screaming specimen contained by walls of instrumentation. One key difference between this record and their debut is the shift in vocal presentation, as this album applies less digital effects to vocalist Ryan Tong, which helps emphasize not only his salivating performances, but painfully resonant lyrics as well. It’s characteristics such as this that make For A Better World a standout record with seven songs that flash bright in a short span of only fifteen minutes. The opening track “Corporate Funded Killing Technology” has a fast-heavy tempo and shifting rhythms that engages listeners with “thirty thousand dead and counting” as a tragically potent first lyric. The following tracks continue with a similar momentum, further displaying bleak and candid lyrics such as when Tong asks: “who decides what comes next?” on “Terminal Democracy”.
As the album crawls forward, “Haunted” conjures an ominous sonic environment accented by hollowing chord changes and blasting d-beat drums. “Imminent Destruction” marches toward a bombastic release of energy with snapping snare hits ripped up by sharp, grinding guitars. The band manipulates repetition well, creating hypnotic spaces within the album’s fast-paced dispatchment. Now there’s only five minutes left to spare; “KTF” targets the ultra-wealthy with venomous spite and aptly states: “perpetual war fills the pockets of the one percent” as the song violently pushes two hundred beats per minute. The final track “Captive (...In The Mutilated Vista)" displays a sprawling landscape of consuming riffs with an echoing vocal performance that harkens back to the spectral voices heard on the band’s first full-length release. The lyrics throughout this song describe the destructive reality of economic and political systems where private enterprise takes precedence over human life.
S.H.I.T. 's music has always suggested an alternative to the oppressive orders that dominate modern life, and while the themes on For A Better World may suggest hopelessness and turmoil, the band spits in the face of true-to-the-bone evil, demonstrating defiance towards the faceless entities indifferent to, or even profiting from human suffering. While their first album reckons with the commodification of their music and utilizes belligerence for self-expression, this new album sends a far more direct message that encourages listeners to consider the world they live in. With an unfolding genocide being carried out in occupied Palestine, the material on this record has only grown more immediate and severe since it was recorded. Ultimatley, S.H.I.T. has delivered a gripping sonic experience that will leave listeners in a disapearing cloud of vapor.