8/10

There's very little comfort to be found on 'Kill The Algorithm', and that's precisely the point. Across its four tracks, Oxford’s Shaven Primates turn their attention towards control, anxiety and the increasingly aggressive forces shaping public life. The band have always operated at the darker end of art-rock and post-punk, but this EP feels more physical than much of their previous work, pushing harder into punk, industrial rock and abrasive guitar music.

‘Saviour’ opens with a distinctly 90s weight. Heavy guitars, dark bass and an unsettled vocal performance frame a song about the instinct to look elsewhere for rescue. There are echoes of Placebo, Nine Inch Nails and A Perfect Circle in the atmosphere, but its real strength comes from the claustrophobia running beneath the arrangement.

‘Pioneer Way’ takes that unease into more recognisably British territory. Written around frustrations with increasingly visible displays of nationalism, the track borrows some of punk’s sneering directness while keeping their own theatrical instincts intact.

While ‘Feed’ is perhaps the EP’s sharpest moment. Its target is the online ecosystem built around monetising insecurity, particularly the figures who sell young men an increasingly narrow idea of masculinity. The heavier guitar work fits the subject well, giving the track the force of a pressure system that keeps tightening from start to finish.

The title-track broadens the argument again. 'Kill The Algorithm' examines the way recommendation systems can repeatedly funnel people towards more extreme material, making the line between suggestion, influence and indoctrination increasingly difficult to see. Musically, the song is colder and more spacious, closing the collection with a more impactful edge than most.

But what ties the EP together is a sense of being trapped inside competing systems of influence. Shaven Primates make good use of that tension, as basslines grind underneath jagged guitars, synths bring an additional layer of unease, and the vocals shift between control and eruption. Nothing feels especially stable, which suits a release about people losing faith in the structures around them.

The result is a compact, abrasive and deliberately uncomfortable release that sounds less like a warning from the future than a reaction to the present.