BAND OF THE DAY: EMBERS

Forming in 2004 out of the ashes of an older punk band, Oakland California's Embers are most definitely part of the same pantheon of crust-etched extremity as the celebrated Neurosis and less celebrated but no less awesome Benümb, and more recent and feverishly received underground outfits like Skaven and Stormcrow. That said, it's easy to romanticise Oakland if you've no contact with the place beyond vinyl sleeves, draw yourself an internal picture of endless squats and crust gigs and fanzine symposiums. Luckily Embers go so way to helping preserve that fantasy. That's nice of them isn't it?

Two of the band are active in squatter rights, guitarist Steven DeCaprio appearing in the movie 'Shelter: A Squatumentary', and previous band Lesser of Two, which featured two of the three founding members of Ember, were much celebrated for their DIY ethic and anarchist politics. Obviously blackened crust, pitched somewhere between Bathory's howling at snow-capped mountains, Tragedy's bloody-nosed spite and Anti-Sect's rummaging through the skip behind Morrisons, is the official soundtrack to giving a shit, and it's packed tightly like rolled up astroturf into the slowburning, keyboard-laden menace of most recent album, 'Shadows'.

Available for free download, their 2007 EP 'Memoria In Aeterna' and their side of the split 12" with Portland's Book of Belial, 'Wrath', can also be picked up for naught from their bandcamp.

That's your weekend sorted, now play them loud and run into a forest.