If you’re one of those people who thinks music and politics should remain separate, you will absolutely hate HAWXX. For those of us who like their music to be a fiery and volatile political vehicle, you will struggle to find a better album than this in 2026.

Resistance Is Justified opens the album with a monologue from the sister of one of the Filton 18 before a chant of ‘Free, Free Palestine’ begins, with a deliberate space in the recording where you’re implicitly invited to fill in the gap with your own voice. This production choice says everything about what HAWXX expect from their audience: Get involved or fuck off.

The level of ferocious bounce in their performance is just - holy shit. The final repetition of ‘Free, Free Palestine’ as the bass crawls towards the final chorus is perfect for any punk festival.

System of a Down are one of the most popular metal bands of all time, and also one of the most creative. You don’t find many bands succesfully taking influence from them because it’s not easy to pull off, but Annouli Papadimitriou’s vocal performance carries the unmistakable drama of Serj Tankian, switching between melodic hooks and primal screams. Macho Bullshit is a swaggering fuck you to the manosphere delivered with brutal passion and technical proficiency, hitting with a force that’s both raw and precise. The creativity and skill of high level metal fused with the ferocity of punk, every instrument on The World Splits Open is performed really, really well. Feral Mother pushes further still as Annouli wails in a way that’s more pained, primal and complex than pure rage, and We Are Nature continues in the same vein with the two tracks so thematically connected they almost function as a single piece.

Arm The Animals is a three minute single that deserves loads of attention. An enormously heavy chugging riff soundtracks a hunt saboteur anthem, as the farm animals move with helmets and heavy duty weapons to enact their revenge on the farmers. As serious as the phrase ‘eat the rich’, which is to say a metaphor but a blunt one, these vegans mean business as the song conjures images of bunny rabbits in tanks and foxes with machine guns. The second half of the album is more spacious, patient and philosophical, spending more time praising the forests than raging at the government, giving the album a deep dimension beyond the surface level political fury.

Middle Eastern woodwind and violin weaves through the record and comes to a full head on the six minute closer, Be That Whore which throws the kitchen sink at everything that came before with crushing doom metal and the heaviest punk building and building before breaking down into pure feedback. Annouli as a vocalist is up there with Jinjer’s Tatiana Shmayluk and Marmozets’ Becca Bottomley, and HAWXX have already earned their credentials after UK Lawyers for Israel wrote to the Scouts citing their song ‘Resistance Is Justified’ as a concern and got The Great Vegan Gathering shut down. If simply saying ‘Free Palestine’ is a controversial act, then HAWXX are here to prove that music still has the power to make the powerful very uncomfortable.