Beginning with a bastardisation of Mastodon’s iconic opening chug to ‘Blood and Thunder’, the new EP from Leedscore supergroup Cyvoid comprises seven songs, thankfully none of which reach the thrash invalidating length of three minutes. An amalgamation of the singer from undead heroes Send More Paramedics (who died for the second time a few years ago), two members of (s)punk ‘n’ rollers The Plight, and guitarist from erratic tech-noise maestros Antares, the band certainly have punch on paper.
The instrumental aperitif ‘Revok’ sets the grinding soundscape immediately with rolls of riffs and pummelling drums that break down to uncover a howling guitar flourish, leading into the precise vocal barks of second song ‘Phenotype’. From here on in it’s a relentless mix of stop-start distortion, gang vocal punishment and some catchy, bluesy metal melodies, spattered in choice portions throughout, such as at the end of the longest song ‘Hardware’.
To make sense of why the band have pigeon-holed themselves into the tired old genre of "Hybrid Warp Metal", you need to look no further than the lyrical themes (and the promotional band pictures, taken in Leeds’ sci-fi heaven Fab Cafe). Clearly heavily influenced by cult fiction of all kinds, there are hoarsely shouted words detailing evolutionary experiments into superhuman races of the flesh and of robotics; "Protean post-human hybrid, Phenotype custom-built". Elsewhere, the brainwashing of humans to be elite killers on alien planets is described with reference to concepts developed in George Orwell’s 1984, and ‘Idoru’ warns of the siren-like dangers of hyper-realistic television, beckoned in with an excerpt from the movie Videodrome. The sheer amount of geekish nods to the back catalogue of the sci-fi genre is astonishing for a short EP, and the band clearly wear their proverbial anoraks with pride.
Overall, the songs aren’t musically re-inventory, but that comes with the territory, and they are short and spiky enough to not get boring. The band clearly wanted to have some fun as self-appointed thrash nerds, and if their latest show at the Brudenell Social Club is anything to go by, vocalist Sam exhibiting an insectoid ability to climb furniture and get in your face, they’ve done just that.