-  It’s nice to hear a band differentiate themselves from the masses of post-punks out there these days, by pushing on over the red warning line and into the savagery of industrial. Melbourne’s Bitumen do exactly that. Fronted by Kate Binning, I first came across them a bit after they released their debut, self-titled full-length, back in 2016, when they followed it up, a year later, doing a split with No Sister. Actually, no disrespect to No Sister and I hope no-one thinks this is a lazy analysis, but if you took their Sonic Youth influenced post-punk and replaced it with a Sisters Of Mercy, Skinny Puppy and Big Black goth-industrial-post-punk maelstrom, they’d sound quite a bit like this.

Is it interesting that none of those bands are female fronted? The heavier side of goth, industrial and post-punk doesn’t boast very many female luminaries. Lydia Lunch, Siouxsie Sioux or Nina Hagen generally didn’t go this hard. I’m tempted to point to recent, female-fronted metal as closer reference point, Arch Enemy maybe?? Perhaps Kate and Co. are just breaking new ground, in which case, bloody great. Binning has specifically said that her experience, growing up in first the Hobart and then Melbourne music scene has been an inclusive one where she found fertile ground for growing independent sounds. Maybe things are actually changing.

Bitumen’s sound is changing too, if only a little. The fuzz and reverb onslaught of their debut was -quite deliberately- self-produced by the band to sound as monolithically lo-fi as their dark heroes of yesteryear. This time round they’re joined behind the boards by Alexander Anglias (of The Faculty and Ill Globo) who also chips in the drums and MPC. Together they’ve given everything more breathing space in the mix, which was a savvy decision. Hey, you could probably even go a bit further. The bell-like ring of the lead guitar on single Twice Shy peals out, but -call me greedy- I could stand to hear more of Kate’s vocals too.

There’s still plenty to hear, though. From the angular pace of opener Lash through the single-friendly brightness of Twice Shy, the collapse into the abyssal, ambient horror of Sicker Dowry, back through the industrial crush of At Bended Knee and classic goth of Hate To Say / A Nice Ride: there’s a lot to like and it’s tracked stylishly to hold your attention, right down to the inescapable claustrophobic clatter that ends closer Cardinalidae.

Bitumen sound like an outlier to me, somewhere between the artier-than-thou world of no-wave and the brutally artless world of heavy music. They blur the line in a way that almost feels inappropriate. The hell with that: Discipline Reaction takes what I liked about both sounds and gives me something new and it’s clearly and as thrillingly transgressive as when I first encountered the sounds it's created from.

- Chris Cobcroft.