Hardcore Hangout: Ghost Fame, Valtatyhjiö, Guardrails, Foxtails, Sour, Mikau, Ekulu, Life, Street Weapon, and Ultras

I've been meaning to do one of these for a while and I'm glad that I finally got around to it. I tend to listen to hardcore in streaks so doing a quick write-up of some stuff that I've enjoyed during my most recent binge makes sense. Also, with lists, it feels more natural to dump a lot of effusive, unqualified praise on your subject- which is definitely what I am doing here. Some of these records are ancient in hardcore years, but keeping up with the hot new shit has never really been my thing. Anyway, maybe what I have to say below will help you discover something you didn't know about before, or maybe it will be the push that you needed to check out a record you should have picked up ages ago. Really, it's whatever. This is all just for fun when it's all said and done. Get down to some hardcore and have yourself a Friday. 

Ghost Fame - Nobody Wants To Be Here Nobody Wants To Leave (Patient Zero)

Not unlike the PS2 survival horror game Fatal Frame, the Lowell, MA-based melo-hardcore band Ghost Fame are also on the hunt for spirits. Although, the spectators the band are seeking to confront, dwell within themselves. We all have things in us that we need to excise and unburden ourselves from, some have the talent and audacity to do it via song. Nobody Wants To Be Here Nobody Wants To Leave is Ghost Fame's second EP and sticks to their devastating Have Heart / Defeater formula, with a rawer, shoutier energy, that grows weightier with chaotic builds until the tension burst and an acoustic guitar line and clearly sung choruses intercept the album's trajectory on "In Mourning" and shepherd it to its climatic and bitter conclusion on"Something Ends, Something Begins." Dissident mathcore monsters MouthBreather pitch in to make "False Chevalier" the scornful conflagration that it is and Ethan Harrison of Great American Ghost lends his voice to the busted up back-bitter "Scenes From a Marriage." This is seriously cathartic. God damn does this band have promise!

 

Valtatyhjiö - Lukko (Sorry State Records) 

Finnish hardcore band Valtatyhjiö would give pause to a bat out of hell with the speed and fury they achieve on their debut cassette Lukko. The first three heaters on this release will inject a dose of excitement into your life in a similar fashion to a bullet whizzing past your ear. This is fighting music for sure and any given moment could loosen a couple of teeth in your gob if it managed to land a direct hit- which, frankly, does frequently and often! As rattled as the first block of venom dripping shrieks, rushing guitars and double-bass kick-powered tranches left me, it wasn't anything compared to the final track, "Pahat hahmot," a mid-tempo banger that feels like a Kvelertak demo with fire and whisky in its bowls and werewolf blood in its veins. Lukko is the kind of death spiral you won't want to pull yourself up from.

 

Guardrails - If You Please (Self-Released)

Richmond, VA's Guardrails are keeping the faith and the warrior spirit alive on their EP If You Please. The album will rip across your brain, cutting synapses like a razor blade cleaving through the tension of a strip of saran wrap. Its dirty peels of crossover guitars and rampaging grooves are not to be trifled with as they are dripping with urgent anticipation and a thrust for vengeance. Guardrails obviously has some classic NYHC influences, but that is not all! If anything, what defines the band is their filthy sound quality and extremely organic textures. If You Please has a grit to it that you usually don't find outside of crust records. Also, the intermissions they've included of borrowed '60s pop-soul and psych point to influences beyond hardcore and help to further illustrate their penchant for sour, lilting melodies. My only complaint is that this record is not longer. I really can't wait to hear more from this band.  

 

Foxtails - Fawn (Skeletal Lightning)

Foxtails's fourth album Fawn was one of the first hardcore records I listened to this year and I still honestly don't know entirely what to make of it. It's good. So freaking good! Beautiful and punishing. Relatable and confrontational. I still feel like my head is swimming every time I put it on. The band can curate a lovely and endearing scramble of soft skramzy grooves and choruses, but it is the addition of Jared Schmidt's violin, and the orchestral overtones that this contributes, that accounts for the album's absolutely intoxicating allure. I'm not going to put too fine of a point on it, but to me, Fawn is a total game-changer. 

 Sour - Songz (Delayed Gratification Records)

It's rare for a hardcore band to make their mission statement as boldly and unmistakably clear as Sour has on their EP Songz. At one point on the EP the bracing dice of guitars, singe of reverberating feedback, and the biting bark of the vocals fade away, and a simple statement of purpose is uttered- "you have to sing your song, even if the notes are sour." This sentiment resonates with that of many folk traditions, wherein you must sing a song, not because they are better or more important than other songs, but because it is your song, and if you don't sing it, then it will never be sung. The defiant spirit of this sentiment, along with the absolute wrecking ball of '90s-inspired groove-core the band is hurling at you on this release, gives Songz the force of a manifesto harmonized with the passion of its origins in the hearts of these young dudes. That might sound cringe to some of you, but only those who embrace cringe can truly come to know themselves. 

Mikau - Abandonware (Self-Released)

What DC's Mikau are doing on their Abandonware EP feels a lot like what Vein (now Vein.fm) attempted to accomplish on 2018's Errorzone. I like what Mikau is doing slightly better though. It feels more comfortable with the idea of blending early '00s industrial and alternative metal with death metal and hardcore and their confidence in combining these elements comes through on this record. While they're not the only band doing the "every-thing-including-the-kitchen-sink-yes-even-nu-metal-especially-nu-metal" style of hardcore, they do it really really well. I've always been amused by the fact that there is also a variety of techno music called "hardcore" and I've always wondered what it would sound like if, you know, a hardcore (punk) band synthesized the two... Well, I literally don't have to ponder this hypothetical anymore because it now exists (Thanks to Mikau), and as it turns out, it's amazing! There are also nods to pretty-boy pop-emo on this EP and the dubsteppier sections sound like underscores embracing a core-meltdown of their psyche. Abandonware is a vicious and self-assured shock of body-maiming body music that will turn you inside out and leave you begging for more.  

Ekulu - Unscrew My Head (Cash Only Records) 

Every time I think I've left Ekulu's Unscrew My Head behind, it pulls me back in. I listened to it upon release back in June of 2021, and I thought it contained a solid roster of tactfully brutal, early '90s-styled NYC hardcore. I liked it but moved on pretty quickly. Then a couple of weeks later I got one of the riffs from "Proven Wrong" stuck in my noddle and I went back to the album to figure out if it was really that earworm worthy or if I was just misremembering it. Not surprisingly, after revisiting the record I would get another groove stuck in my head. And this kept repeating. Month after month. And now I don't have to wonder if this record has staying power. I know! Unscrew My Head has left a boot-shaped impact mark on the inside of my skull! An impression that I gladly retrace as often as possible.

Life - Ossification Of Coral (Not Enough)

Japan's LIFE straight-up rules! I couldn't stop there, but you can't make me. Their 2020 album Ossification Of Coral is the latest collection of guttural, insanely slimy, Motorhead worshiping crust punk from the group, and one that I still regularly throw it on when I want to feel like the walls of my apartment are about to collapse in on me. Sometimes you just need music that acknowledges how stacked the deck is against you and which refuses to give way to complacency no matter how thick the shit gets. Ossification Of Coral is that kind of music! Also, the title is savage as hell, as it implies that there is a process of turning coral to bone! Brutal right!?! Well, it also works as an analogy to what singer Hiro defines as world "starvation," or the strangling of the planet's ability to sustain life through environmental devastation. So it's not just brutal but extremely pointed in its criticism. LIFE are as deliberate in thought and intention as their sound is untamed and feral.

 

Street Weapon - Quick to Die (Not For the Weak)

Noisey, dangerous and disaffected sounding, Virginia Beach's Street Weapon emits a deadly, radioactive halo of bad vibes on their 2020 debut Quick to Die. The guitars sound incredibly slippery, leaving a residue of crimson fluid and other excretions in their wake for you to slip and skin your knees on. Also, the riffs feel impracticably hostile, like someone screwed a bunch of hammers to the sides of a circular saw. I love a record that gives off the sense that it will grab you by the collar and shove you around for fun and that is unconditionally what I am getting with every callous, choke-hold groove the band whips my way on this release. "The Truth" in particular is very menacing, as its persistent locked guitar lines feel like their constantly putting my back against the wall, and tracks like the muscular crunch of "American Dream" sound like anything but an edifying fantasy and everything like a benighted swath of dilapidated ruin. In this life, you're either quick or you're dead, and if you're not the former, then you might just be Quick to Die.

Ultras - Ultras (Convulse Records)

Ultras are terrifying. They're like a nightmare you keep dying in and can't wake up from. Their self-titled EP dropped last December and I'm still attempting to comb my hair forward from the initial encounter. Featuring members of World Peace and Fentanyl, the band is exactly as slug-brained and violent as could be expected from such a meeting of malignant minds. There are two things you need to know about Ultras, white-knuckle speed and razor-wire guitar lines. The first will tag your back with a black rubber stripe as it treats you as a disregarded speed bump and the other will wrap you up like a Christmas ham and then divide you like the spoils of war. Ultras are the ultimate frontier of barbaric sound. Do you dare to cross the threshold? I did. And I'm still alive (mostly).