The UK’s most exciting new talent, Vexed - the crushing Hertfordshire foursome combine aggressive groove mixed with ominous threads of progressive atmosphere on their long-awaited debut album, Culling Culture. If the release of two recent one-off singles served as an auditory love tap, Culling Culture is a wound-up suckerpunch. Hard-as-nails lead vocalist Megan Targett’s vicious vocal assault blending venomously low growls, soaring cleans and razor-sharp rap-like deliveries (see “Fake” and “Weaponize”) is backed by the pure technical proficiency of bandmates Willem Mason-Geraghty (drums), Jay Bacon (guitar) and Al Harper (bass). Airtight riffs à la genre greats Meshuggah and favorites like Periphery and Vildhjarta, an instigating rhythm section and stratospheric solos and leads prove that Vexed could just as confidently command the biggest open-air stages as they could the toughest of backroom hardcore shows. For as confident as they are musically, Vexe is as poignant lyrically. The title of the album, Culling Culture, and portions of its contents deliver the band’s unfiltered response to the world’s latest social phenomena of public ostracism, “cancel culture”.