Integrity

There was the dawn of the 1990's, still rattling from the roar of American hardcore punk and heavy metal that had both taken seed in the previous decade and whose delineating lines had by this point almost completely faded. There was a burgeoning American underground music scene beginning to flourish in the wake of these new musical and cultural forms. There was catharsis and camaraderie found in rambunctious, deafening celebrations of youth, there were dreams of widening audiences and open arms.

And then there was the darkness. There was Integrity.

First emerging as a metallic punk outfit with a serious violent streak from the punk underground in 1988, Integrity soon began to evolve into something very different. You could feel the pull towards darkness on the band's first release, the In Contrast of Sin 7" EP released by Victory Records while the label was still in its infancy. The record was stained with a sinister sound and style that was rooted in classic hardcore but had this undeniable metallic crunch and a seething rage that felt like the music could completely spin out of control at any moment. Much of this black energy was coalesced in the strange, strained roar of front man and founding member Dwid, whose vocals were some of the most distinctive in heavy music. This first burst was soon followed by Integrity's debut album, 1991’s Those Who Fear Tomorrow, and it was here where Integrity's sound fully came together, a fearsome first major work that combined Dwid's preoccupations with apocalyptic themes and the occult with a brutal mixture of speedy hardcore punk, ragged thrash metal and subtle industrial influences all permeated with a seriously sinister atmosphere.

From there, Integrity seemed to willfully obscure itself, even as underground hardcore and metal was growing more popular than ever. Revealing esoteric influences that ranged from the psychotic metal-tinged punk of Idaho's Septic Death and Japanese maniacs G.I.S.M., the seminal industrial noise of NON, the nightmarish artwork of British painter Francis Bacon, and the apocalyptic philosophies of the Process Church and other end time cults, Integrity had little in common with most of what was going on at the time. Their sometimes heady subject matter delved into religion, the occult and human atrocities, and became focused into a kind of artistic ideology that christened "Holy Terror", a term that would become almost synonymous with their savage metallic attack and terminally grim outlook. The rest of the decade saw the band evolving and experimenting with each new album, touring through the US and Europe multiple times, as well as weathering a constant flux in the band's lineup with Dwid remaining the one constant in Integrity.

And in 2011, twenty years after their groundbreaking debut album, Integrity issued the Detonate Worlds Plague 12” on Dwid’s Holy Terror imprint, a return to the blazing hardcore metal punk of Systems Overload delivered with a psychotic rawness that still manages to lace their sound with experimental textures and hallucinatory noisescapes. Twenty years later, Integrity continues to intimidate and incite, still howling at the doomsday clock, still staring at the maelstrom.