Opener "Saviour" sets the tone with a queasy, gorgeous menace, all grinding low-end and guitars that seem to circle rather than strike. The band have clearly been marinating in early-90s alt-rock — you can hear Placebo's glamorous unease and the clenched-jaw tension of Nine Inch Nails bleeding through the mix — but there's a grunge-adjacent grit underneath that keeps things earthbound. Vocally, the track does the thing this band does best: a croon that curdles into a scream exactly when the song needs it to, never a second too soon.

"Pioneer Way" is where the record properly bares its teeth. Reportedly born from guitarist Tom's exasperation at the sudden, faintly absurd national fondness for draping flags over lamp posts and roundabouts, it channels the Sex Pistols' sneer without ever feeling like pastiche. There's real wit buried in the fury here, the kind that only lands when a band is genuinely annoyed rather than performing annoyance for effect. The rhythm section thunders along with a swagger that makes the track's three-and-a-bit minutes feel shorter than they are — always a good sign.

"Feed" is the EP's angriest and most focused moment, a snarling dissection of the online grifters who monetise young men's loneliness and insecurity. Musically it leans into Rage Against The Machine's coiled aggression and something of Metallica's thrash-adjacent heft, but Shaven Primates resist the urge to simply borrow the riffs wholesale — the groove stays theirs, taut and mean, refusing to let the message get lost under the noise.

Then there's the title track, the record's centrepiece and clearly its reason for being. "Kill The Algorithm" is a howl of frustration at the way recommendation engines quietly radicalise and inflame, dressed in the icy melodicism of Radiohead, the theatrical cool of Bowie, and the claustrophobic pulse of Joy Division. It's ambitious, occasionally uncomfortable, and unafraid to sit with difficult material rather than resolve it neatly — which is, frankly, the point. Whether or not you buy every strand of the band's argument, the conviction behind it is unmistakable, and the song's final stretch, all clattering drums and vocal disintegration, earns its intensity rather than reaching for it cheaply.

Four tracks isn't much to work with, but Shaven Primates have never needed acreage to make an impression. What "Kill The Algorithm" confirms is a band still restless, still spoiling for a fight with whatever's currently rotting the culture from the inside, and still gifted enough musically to make that fight sound thrilling rather than hectoring. Post-punk's habit of looking backward gets a firm shove forward here. Essential listening for anyone who still suspects their phone might be quietly working against them.