SNITCH TRIAL — ...Like a Rat. Classic ripping punk excellence!!!

 SNITCH TRIAL — ...Like a Rat

(Primitive Moth Records and Innercity Uprising) March 2026

Seven tracks. Sub-ten minutes at a guess. Zero wasted motion. Sydney's Snitch Trial arrived with ...Like a Rat the same way a brick comes through a window — no warning, no introduction, no interest in your comfort.

This is the kind of 7-inch that used to be the lifeblood of the underground before everything became a streaming playlist and a press release. The format suits them perfectly because Snitch Trial don't have a filler problem — they don't have enough time to develop one. What they have instead is a relentless tightness, a band of veterans that has clearly ground these tracks down to the bone in rehearsal and on stage until nothing soft remains. The anarcho-crust influence sits underneath the hardcore the way it should: as foundation, not costume. You can hear the Infest/Lack of Interest/Crossed Out lineage, the Swede-crust and Anarchopunk riff worship, the Amebix-adjacent darkness in the resonating rhythm choices, but none of it is being curated for credibility. It's just what these people listen to and how that listening has metabolised into something of their own.

The powerviolence edge keeps it unhinged in the best possible way. "Filthy Fuckin' Rapist" comes in hard and direct, title first, no throat-clearing, the kind of track that treats its subject with exactly the contempt it deserves and wastes no additional syllables doing so. "Sink or Swim" hits the groove-to-blast ratio that separates great hardcore from the merely fast — there's a moment in that track where you feel the band lock in and the room tilt, and that's the whole game right there. "Stench of the Stool Pigeon" carries the record's central thematic through-line — the title alone earns its place in the canon of great Australian hardcore track names, but musically sits very comfortably alongside the best Tutti Parze and Subversion tracks ever dropped, which is genuinely high praise and is meant as such.

The production is appropriately filthy without being a murk-fest. You can hear every instrument doing its job, which is a more important distinction than it sounds when you're playing this fast — plenty of bands this aggressive lose the plot sonically and end up as undifferentiated noise. Snitch Trial keep the definition, which means the riffs actually riff and the drums actually drum, and when the vocalist is in your face about something, you hear exactly what that something is.

All seven tracks are solid. Not a skip among them. This is a record for people who still dig around in distro bins, who own 7-inches by bands most people have never heard of, who know the difference between hardcore that is hard and fast because it has something to say and hardcore that is hard and fast because it's a style choice. Snitch Trial are the former. Hunt this down immediately — Primitive Moth and Innercity Uprising did right by this one.

...Like a Rat is the kind of release that justifies the existence of the underground. Full stop.

https://www.instagram.com/snitch_trial/

https://primitivemoth.bandcamp.com/album/like-a-rat