Persecutor return with new EP 'Lateral Violence'

“From birth it is clear to him that this narrow world, strewn with prohibitions, can only be called in question by absolute violence.”
Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth (1963)

Since their inception in 2019, powerviolence/hardcore purveyors PERSECUTOR have established their reputation as one of so-called australia’s most incisive and uncompromising musical exports. On 2023’s Babylon’s Ashes and 2024’s Global Prison Experiment, the Naarm/Melbourne quartet offered up decolonial screeds against encroaching fascism, racist hegemony, and the wanton oppression of peoples across the world.

Drawing on an aggressive lineage that encompasses influences like Hatred Surge, Poison Idea, Coke Bust, Nails, Insect Warfare and Dystopia, PERSECUTOR’s latest EP release Lateral Violence turns their conceptual scope inward, exploring themes of racism, anger, horizontal hostility, social dynamics, and the stain of intergenerational trauma. By uplifting the voices of people of colour, the group’s collective vision remains one centred on the immediacy of non-white experience, daring to present raw honesty through naked confrontation.

With clenched fists and firm resolve, PERSECUTOR continues to wield their extreme sonic profile as a tool for breaking chains–by any means necessary.

Lateral Violence will be made available as a 7" record, cassette, and digital release. Pre-orders open today via PERSECUTOR's bandcamp, with a digital/physical release next Friday, October 17^th. The EP will also have a US release via labels To Live A Lie and No Time.

PERSECUTOR: Bandcamp / Instragram

^{Band photo: Charlie Ick}