COPULATERS — HEADLESS SURFER (2026) as reviewed by Mark. J. Ripping fast hardcore glory!
COPULATERS — HEADLESS SURFER (2026)
cop-u-laters.bandcamp.com/album/headless-surfer
Thirteen songs. Thirteen minutes. Zero filler. That's the contract Copulaters laid out on their debut To The Bone and they haven't blinked. Headless Surfer is the second record and if anything they've tightened the screws and widened the lens at the same time — which sounds contradictory but makes complete sense once you're two tracks in and grinning like an idiot.
This is not powerviolence. Not fastcore in the one-dimensional blast-and-done sense. What P N Lindsay, Sadam, Tbagz and Pablo are doing here sits in a much richer tradition — the kind of high-tempo hardcore where the songs actually matter. Think early Poison Idea before the denim got too heavy, think Scream's tighter moments, Necros, Angry Samoans — bands that played fast because they meant it, not because they were trying to win a BPM competition. But then there's this whole other layer running underneath it all, that melodic sharpness and red-bull-urgent hook sensibility you got from Dicks, Fang, Agent Orange, T.S.O.L. in their prime — bands that understood speed and melody aren't enemies.
And then there's the Vicious Circle elephant in the room. Anyone who's been paying attention to Melbourne's underground for the past couple of decades knows what Paul is capable of across styles and configurations. What Headless Surfer does a lot of the time is deliver the most purely pleasurable parts of Vicious Circle's best work — that locked-in groove, that driving momentum that doesn't just bludgeon but pulls you forward — condensed into these hyper-efficient mini-episodes that hit and are gone before you've processed them. It never feels like a lesser version of anything. It feels like the same musical intelligence working in a tighter frame.
The individual songs hold up too. Biocop opens the whole thing at a sprint and refuses to let up. Back to School is one minute and a half of absolutely driving momentum. Impatience — thirty-six seconds, makes its point and exits. Ravens Cry and Twisted State show you the band have got real groove and swing underneath all the velocity. Messing Around and Savage are straight-down-the-line bangers with that melodic sharpness I mentioned — you'll have the riffs in your head whether you want them there or not.
Then you get to the title track. Headless Surfer is the curveball nobody telegraphed — a slowed-down chorus that's actually harmonious, a mid-section that plods in the most magnificent way, and suddenly the band sounds twice as big as they did on the previous eleven tracks. It's the kind of moment that reframes the whole record.
And then they close the thing with their version of Bloodlust's Northcote. A Melbourne hardcore classic, still as confrontational as it was in 1996, and Copulaters do not sand any of the edges down. Good. Don't.
Recorded at Goatsound by Jason Fuller — sounds exactly right. Mastered by Paul Fox. Artwork from Leo/130, design from Jim Grimwade. The whole package looks and sounds like people who give a damn.
No pissing about. Get it.
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