Oakland’s Cell Rot make a blindingly fast and dirty form of hardcore punk that recalls the earliest days of powerviolence. The songs aren’t necessarily short, but they lurch and drool and shift in unpredictable directions. I don’t know what the band members look like, and I’d prefer not to know, since I’d rather just imagine them as cellar-dwelling mutants coated in mud and slime. It’s hard to get any other image from Cell Rot’s two new songs.

We last heard from Cell Rot during the peak pandemic era, when they dropped the 2021 EP Slowly Falls Apart. Now, they’re gearing up for an Australian tour with likeminded bands World Peace and Histamine, and they’ve dropped the frantic and guttural two-song single “Shadow People” b/w “Cosmic Vertigo.” That’s a four-minute break in your day to let ugly things just flow through you. Listen below.

“Shadow People” b/w “Cosmic Vertigo” is out now on Convulse.