It's the end of another long week and I hope you're relaxing with a preferred beverage while reading this. I know not everyone has the luxury of being home and comfortable at the end of the day on Friday, but take this message as my sincere wish that they did. As a bit of a celebration for another work week concurred, I've treated myself to a buffet of (semi) recent hardcore releases. Very few things remind me of why I love music as easily as a top-notch hardcore record and I've assembled my thoughts on a few of the albums I spun today just in case you're the same way and need some recommendations. Maybe you know these records. Maybe they're totally new to you. Either way, I'm stoked we can listen to them in solidarity, knowing that we aren't beaten yet. Have a good weekend!
I covered Punitive Damage's We Don't Forget EP as a standalone review back in the summer of 2020. I thought it showed a lot of potentials as far as ugly, pounding, '80s hardcore revival goes. Their latest LP This is the Blackout feels unprecedented in comparison. They've honed in on more of a powerviolence meets classic rock style that is somewhere between Punch and Kiss and it really suits them. Their newfound embrace of camp, hard rock and backwater Americana even lends itself to some saloon style, Jerry Lewis-esque piano riffs cameoing on the fantastic and rabble-rousing single "Bottom Feeder." That track and others are like a bottle of whisky smashing over the back of your head, a soaking and bloody wake-up call that trouble is brewing all around you, and you best get your mits up and be ready for a brawl. The lyrical content is refreshing as well, emphasizing the need for community and affinity and speaking from singer Jerkova's perspective as a daughter of Mexican immigrants, a vantage point that gives new salience to the group's fury. Punative Damage are like a totally different band on This is the Blackout than they were two years ago. Unequivocally for the better, in my opinion.
Time Vehicle Earth is the second LP from St. Louis's gothic digital hardcore group The Mall, and the first since Spencer Bible joined founding member Mark Plant to make the band a duo. The album's content hinges on themes of the absolute unity of all things, as in, the planet and the universe are a single entity that we all inhabit and play a role in creating with our actions. Nothing that we put out into the world dissipates in a vacuum, and all of our energy is returned to us in one form or another. For their part, what The Mall are putting out there is high-octane goth techno that lashes and bites like leather whip and beats that will make you stomp and hoof around like someone lit a book of matches under your toes. While the dark analog thrills and frantically recursive electronic percussion have their own sense of progression and purpose, the project is definitely elevated by Mark's raspy, distressed shout that sounds like Scott Vogel trying out for KMFDM, but being a lot more belligerent than the job actually requires. The world might not be ending tomorrow, but that doesn't mean you can't dance like it was.
Hacker - Pick A Path (Sorry State Records)
As many of us come to terms with the next chapter of the ever-unfurling technological dystopia that our society finds itself in, it might be time to look for some sage advice in unlikely places... Well, unlikely for some. I've gleaned more life advice from the words of hardcore singers than I care to divulge. But this isn't about John Joseph. Right now, I'm talking about Melbourne's Hacker. The down under thunder five-sum followed up their laudable 2019 demo with the sci-fi-themed Pick A Path. The album recounts fictional rebellion against the system of machines that control humanity, soundtracked by harry, oozing and deliberately disfigured grooves that splinter in all directions like a guerilla army on the move. Synthesizing the insurgent messiness of Poison Idea with the nasty wind-up and knock-out that has been refined with deadly precision by recent core-revival bands like Rival Mob, Pick A Path is a synergy of new and old that combusts like an EMF bomb in a server farm, frying circuit boards and shattering the shackles of the mind. Hack or get hacked!
Crisis Man - Asleep in America (Digital Regress)
Man, if there aren't just some records that get into your cuts and make a gooey, bloody little mess there. Crisis Man's Asleep In America is one of those records that lives in me like a nesting, disgruntled badger. Released this past spring, it consists of nine songs that cover a gambit of topics that concern the disaffection of living in the contemporary United States. Sonically, Crisis Man has this cracked and squirrelly allure to them that combines lean and oiled, razor-sharp riffs with fat-ass low-end grooves, binding them together like a tango between six feet of barbed wire and a waterbed. The guitar cords slip and skitter like a centipede burrowing through a jar of vaseline amongst over-warmed and sprawling throngs of synth-fueled paranoia. A gregarious cacophony that generates just enough confusion for the yelping and unhinged yodel of the group's vocal performances to sneak up behind you and stick a fork in your kneck. If Asleep In America can't wake you up, then you might have turned over from coma patient to cadaver.
Squint - Wash Away (Sunday Drive Records)
Hey look! Another freakin' fantastic St.Louis band on this list. Squint really left me wanting more in the best kind of way after their scruffy, heartfelt and fuzzy debut EP Feel It dropped earlier this year. That album could have been two hours long and I probably would have still listened to it consecutively for days on end. Now they've mercifully followed up their debut with another EP, this one titled Wash Away, and it's a beautiful pivot of focus for the band. They've done some amazing groundwork in the last couple of months, digging into their sound and restructuring it so that the guitar melodies are both meaner and more melodic as well as able to support increasingly colorful waves of Sugar coated Dinosuar Jr.-inspired distortion. This release sees Singer Brennen Wilkinson even more passionately engaged as well, hurling himself forward and into the fray and finding traction through the firm tread of his own anguished, imploring cry. It should be obvious by now, but I'll say it as it wasn't: the blissful scuffle of Wash Away is very easy to get swept up in.
Cleaver - No More Must Crawl (Klonosphere Records)
Cleaver is a French metallic hardcore band who have taken up the cause of reproducing a familiar style of Converge-inspired hardcore. This might not sound particularly remarkable to you, but that's just the jaded hipster in you talking. The reality is that we all want more Converge and Poison the Well in our lives, and when the originals can't deliver, there are always those willing to shoulder the mantel of their forebearers, perpetuating the claustrophobic chaos that we crave. That's at least how I would defend a lesser band than Cleaver. Cleaver themselves don't require validation or explanation. All they need you to do is unfasten the lock on the door to your mind, and their LP No More Must Crawl do the rest- kicking it off its hinges, flattening you under their thread as they lumber through the doorway and ransacking the privacy of your inner sanctum. There is so much going on with the tracks on this LP that it's like a whirlwind between your ears. Like getting strapped to the undercarriage of a rollercoaster and having to ride it all the way to the end. It's like... it's just awesome. But not in the Bill and Ted kind of way. More in the, "I don't know that my body can handle this much stimulation without barfing," kind of way. Cut loose your expectations and give yourself over to Cleaver.
GridIron - No Good at Goodbyes (Triple B Records)
Broken Vow - Sane Minds End (Sunday Drive Records)
Alright, so you've reached the end of the list. You're probably battered and bruised and in need of a hug, but that's all going to have to wait because we have one more bastard for you to cross paths with. Broken Vow is a Connecticut band that released, what I feel, is a stone-cold classic last year, the Sane Minds End EP. Everything about it just feels grand and ostentatious, like the band is getting at some truth that lies buried and dormant inside all of us- stirring only occasionally just to remind you that it is hibernating in the pit of your being. They accomplish this with an enormous sweep of thrashy riffs and clattering heavy metal grooves that borrow equally from the metalcore of Strain as the thoughtful headrush of Turning Point. And then there are the vocals, which sound like the singer is howling against the wind, vainly trying to force the currents of the air to reverse direction until their throat becomes hoarse, dry and quivering with fatigue. Broken Vow throws every ounce of passion they had at this little record and the results will pin you to the ceiling like you just stepped on a landmine. Sensitive but not passive, aggressive without being numb to pain, Sane Minds End feels like the dawning of something big, a covenant, a promise of a return, and I am here for whatever Broken Vow brings down from the mountain to share with us next.
GridIron sounds the way hardcore exists, abstractly, in my mind. Affirmative. Confident. Intimidating. And able and willing to pile drive you through a coffee table as a joke, or just because. Few bands entirely live up to this expectation in reality, but GridIron does. Their LP No Good At Goodbyes is a beast if there ever was one. Stalking like a tiger while leaving footprints in its wake as wide and deep as potholes. The group's rapping singing style is fluid and satisfyingly aggressive, with a loose but direct dialect that is suitable to a streetwise outlook, and the gorilla-sized grooves the band musters could stand up with any thrown down by Downset or Vision of Disorder. Listening to No Good at Goodbyes feels like preparing for the fight of your life. If you think you've got what it takes, then step into the ring with GridIron. If not, then you better practice saying goodbye, good night, and sayonara.
Broken Vow - Sane Minds End (Sunday Drive Records)
