“…Indulgence, anger, impending doom, confusion, finding your place in the world…” lists Aussie weirdo rocker Cal Donald as to his recurring themes. Easily cataloguing the arduous struggle universally felt by humanity wading through a quagmire of rampant authoritarianism and societal implosion, Donald’s casual ticking off of motifs touches a natural and perhaps accidental profundity that belies his irreverent front.

Originally in garage-pysch band Draggs along with fellow scuzz thrasher Kel Mason, Donald has been cutting a similarly warped slice of lo-fi synthpunk with new project Liquid Face, unleashing a string of fuzzed-out minimal dreg choked with rubbery keyboards, murky vocals and acerbic snot. Dropping new EP off the back of pandemic turmoil and isolated rumination via trusty Italian label Goodbye Boozy Records, Crumbling Structure, as the title suggests, soundtracks the rotting orthodoxy that’s inching towards collapse.

“Is this the Police? Fuck you!!!” yelps a cartoon Adolf Hitler from martial arts comedy Kung Fury, opening the album on first track ‘Power Trip’, a seething diatribe against fascistic police and the tiny little men intoxicated with their unearned authority, Donald’s lyrical spits of SS door knocks and WWIII giving disorientating charge with fizzy drum machines and warbling synthlines. The polluted congeal of abrasive guitar attack and acrid sonics doesn’t let up across any of its four songs, buzzing its way violently through ‘Lobotomy’ and ‘Impending Doom’ before the final poisoned invective against the apathetic wealth hoarders in ‘2083’, Donald’s tirade puncturing through the fetid, lo-fi broth with the repeated split-lip of “money, power, less by the hour” stinging with queasy familiarity to any overworked and underpaid millennial/Gen Z.

Saturated with all the punk swagger and derisive humour one expects from the distinct Aussie eggpunk scene, Liquid Face hides an affecting and personal exposure beneath the grime which sets him apart from his freaky contemporaries singing about mutant rats and alien game shows (as great as it is). Crumbling Structure is a gloriously corroded ten minutes of caustic feculence smouldering with radiation burns that perfectly scores the current disintegration of Western Civilisation.