Bankers are getting richer, cops more corrupt. Politicians are stuffing their pockets and running entire nations into the ground. While the rest of us toil and wilt in the gutter of helplessness and resentment, as the shadows of war and class enslavement elongate further into a futureless, horizonless twilight...
With immense pride and trepidation, we’re overjoyed to finally announce our newly sealed alliance with a band that we’ve been a fan of from far before this label even existed.
After ten long years cloaked in a mysterious silence, no one would have hoped or imagined we'd ever see the return of Bristol’s bleakest. Yet their grandiose re-emergence from the shadows is not only completely unexpected, but it sees post-punk/industrial masters Hateful Abandon restored to their most shimmering and relevant form, resounding as more necessary, intimidating and bloated with bile than ever before, as they reascend the throne of dissent in a broken world overrun by bastards. The eternal duo of multi-instrumentalists Tom “Swine” Price and Martin “Vice Martyr” Brindley rebound to resplendent despondency after a decade of silence with “Threat”, a brand new full-length execration once again weaving the grim fibers of post-punk, industrial, anarcho and crust punk, black metal and darkwave into their own idealization of disillusion and resentment toward a world they do not recognize nor accept. “Threat” not only erases a ten-year absence completely by perfectly continuing the legacy of their previous three acclaimed full-lengths (2008’s “Famine”, 2011’s “Move”, and 2014’s “Liars/Bastards”), but it evolves the duo’s unrivaled vision further, cementing their status of defiant outsider cult consecrated by a career spanning almost twenty years that has has seen few credible rivals or imitators. Once again entirely written and self-recorded as a secluded duo with zero outside input or involvement, “Threat” picks up straight from where the band had vanished back in 2014, unfolding eight new songs and thirty eight minutes of pessimistic, blue-collar cultural upheaval that tell the story of a deafened world headed straight into doom. The echoes of Killing Joke, Joy Division, Godflesh, Amebix, Swans, Coil, Rudimentary Peni, Ramleh, etc., all reflecting through the shards of a splintered sonic mirror, at times directly cited, others more distantly evoked, as they ominously reverberate through a barren post-industrial wasteland of broken cities and ruined lives.
“Threat” is slated for an August 29 2025 reissue on LP, CD, MC and digital formats worldwide via Sentient Ruin, and is now pre-orderable via all our channels.
Since the mid 00’s the Bristol, UK-based duo of multi-instrumentalists Tom “Swine” Price and Martin “Vice Martyr” Brindley have been dredging the forlorn depths of Britain’s 80’s and 90’s lost underground to subvert musical conventions and unearth a new beacon of class upheaval and of apocalyptic prognostication. The band has its origins in Brindley’s solo depressive black metal project Abandon, which changed name to Hateful Abandon and shifted direction once Price joined the project in the mid 00’s. The post-punk, crust and early industrial bands like Godflesh, Amebix, Rudimentary Peni, Coil, Swans, Killing Joke, Joy Division, etc. that helped shape and refine the duo’s initial vision, all had their formative years during the Tatcher-led period of the 80’s when social strife and class war had reached a new pinnacle in the UK since the previous century’s industrial revolution, and Britain’s underground music was becoming deeply rooted in anarchist and philosophical dissent, and being shaped by the time’s fervent squat culture. Foreseeing a new post-capitalist society rising and already dragging the planet straight back into doom, Swine and Vice Martyr detoured from Abandon’s original raw black metal sound and picked up instead from where their 80’s and 90’s UK counter-culture ancestors had left off, setting out to create a new sonic barricade against a new dark world rising by conjoining their legacy childhood influences with new elements from their contemporary underground and surroundings: Abandon’s pre-existing depressive black metal elements, as well as industrial, neo-folk, and dark wave. This unison lead to the creation of their 2008 debut album, “Famine”, released in the UK on CD by Todestrieb Records, and entirely written, recorded and produced by Vice Martyr and Swine alone, as would be with their every following release. With its dismal melodies, hipnotic dirges, and apocalyptic invocations, “Famine” established and spearheaded a new millennium current of UK underground post-industrial counterculture, stylistically converging with other similar acts like Lifelover, Ride for Revenge, or Ramleh, and establishing Hateful Abandon as an instant novelty with a small but devoted cult following. The band followed up its debut album with the sophomore full-length offering “Move” in 2011, released again by Todestrieb Records, and showcasing a marked advancement for the duo from a production standpoint, and displaying a far more articulated and heavy sound than its predecessor. This release further shaped the band’s burdensome bleakness that would become its defining trait thereafter, while aslo blurring their initial DSBM elements to further exalt their new industrial and post-punk complexions. A surprising turn came around 2013, when from being a semi-independent entity, the band was signed by renowned UK extreme metal label Candlelight Records, and began performing live gigs as a duo to promote its third Candlelight-issued 2014 full-length album, appropriately titled “Liars/Bastards”, another dominant statement of post-industrial vision and visceral musical precognition that cemented the band’s cult status even further. What followed shortly after the album’s release and initial run of UK gigs however, remains still not fully understood and shrouded in mystery. But label animosity is to be suspected, as the band quickly withdrew from its live experiments and disappeared into nothingness, with no communications or announcements for the following ten long years. A decade later, in 2024, when the band’s name was fading from conscious memory and the world had seemingly moved on, the band unexpectedly and out of nowhere dropped its fourth album - “Threat” - on Bandcamp as a digital self-release. The album was no “return to form”, as the band had already vanished at it’s peak a decade prior, but was rather a coherent yet again masterful continuation and expansion of Hateful Abandon’s unrivaled vision, perfectly following in - and expanding on - the footsteps laid on its preceding three albums, with its abysmal amalgamation of crust, post-punk, anarcho-punk, industrial and dark wave shimmering with more vigor, vibrancy, and relevancy than ever before, as it relaunched the band straight into their grim dissection of reality and further cemented Swine and Vice Martyr’s reputation as visionaries and dissidents in a broken capitalist world overrun by bastards, liars and thieves. Sentient Ruin had been a fan and admirer of Hateful Abandon from before the label even existed, so the surprise release of the album and re-emergence of the band triggered an instant collaboration effort to have “Threat” immediately republished on all physical formats in summer 2025 - the first ever time the band’s music was ever released on analog cassette and vinyl formats.