Enzyme – Golden Dystopian Age

Formed in 2016 by members of ear-shredding Australian punk bands like Pisschrïst, Krömosom, Hävittäjät, and Scab Eater, Melbourne’s Enzyme have been pushing their own take on Japanese-influenced, noise-drenched punk ever since. Their sound takes obvious cues from Confuse, Gloom, and Exit Hippies, but also stretches into the kind of blown-out psychedelic space rock you’d expect from Hawkwind at their most deranged.

After several demos, EPs, a great split with Osaka crasher crusties Zyanose, and their 2019 debut album Howling Mind, Enzyme return with their second LP, Golden Dystopian Age. The record builds on their usual mix of psych-punk and raw hardcore, but this time there are also unexpected electronic touches, from dancey disco beats to harder techno pulses, courtesy of NERVE, aka Joshua Wells. It could have easily turned into a gimmick, but instead it makes the band sound even more unhinged and alive. Written in the shadow of fires, floods, social unrest, and Australia’s brutal lockdown years, Golden Dystopian Age feels like a record made by people staring straight into the mess around them and spitting back at it.

Eight tracks, 14 minutes, no breathing room. The drums are frantic, the guitars are buried under a wall of fuzz and distortion, the bass hits like concrete in the gut, and the vocals come through as a constant stream of desperate, haunted screams. The disco beats and psychedelic parts don’t soften anything, they just make the whole thing weirder, more unstable, and more exciting. Underneath all the noise, Enzyme are still a raging punk band with a clear anti-authoritarian bite. Even better, Golden Dystopian Age was completely self-produced, from recording to mastering, with the band and their close circle handling the whole thing, including artwork that proudly nods to the Japanese crust punk tradition.

Among 2023’s strongest punk records, Golden Dystopian Age easily holds its own next to albums like Physique’s Again and GELD’s Currency // Castration. Musically, Enzyme sit somewhere between those two worlds, but they are very much doing their own thing, twisting noisy hardcore, psych-punk, and dystopian electronics into one ugly, furious blast. In a year full of records trying to sound like the end of the world, Golden Dystopian Age actually feels like it was dragged out of the wreckage.