Some of us may already have picked up this mini-album on import over the past year (myself on thick pure white vinyl with gatefold sleeve, no less!) but its release on these shores has no less quelled the brazened creativity that pours from every tantalising hook and rhythm. Hailing from the Netherlands *Malkovich *are a band all too wary of the direction their peers are heading for, tempted all too frequently by the math-core pied piper, leading them astray with promises of peer admiration and *Dillinger *support slots. Instead, Malkovich is a band that refuses to lose sight of good harmonic structures, in turn pioneering a strain of melodic innovation that takes root in the solid catchy riffs that *Snapcase *first installed in the hardcore psyche back on their classic album ‘Progression Through Unlearning’.

_‘012’ _is such a track, weaving through grating swathes of intricate melody without ever losing sight of the menacing intensity bustling throughout, while _‘014’ _whistles past with a shattering array of syncopation and hard-rocking beats.

The product of a thriving, ever fluctuating European hardcore scene _‘The Foundation Rocks’ _is a captivating collection of tracks that once more pushes the genre into a new realm of ingenuity and innovation, that not only rocks the foundation but positively topples the building to the ground.