Man, SickOnes... it almost makes me nauseous thinking about what could have been. The UK three-man (+ one lady) crew came up in that weird window in the late '10s when otherwise
cool Millennials started coming out to their friends as fans of Minor Threat and Bad Brains and Biohazard and Youth Brigade and began starting bands that could actually get booked at hipster festivals as more than just a sideshow or treated as something other than a public spectacle. Trash Talk pioneered the possibility of flexibly minded old school revival in a lot of ways, which Turnstile used as the runway for their own take off into the stratosphere, and I always felt like SickOnes could have obtained a parallel altitude had they stuck with it. Unfortunately, they decided to ground the project in 2021 after releasing the "Agility" single, leaving their most recent and lengthy release of note being their 2018 EP
Find Energy.
Find Energy is undoubtedly worth revisiting, representing a forceful intersection of punk grooves, punchy melodies, and hip-hop attitude; it feels like being funneled into a first-person perspective of someone completing a legendary run of a
Ninja Warrior-style obstacle course with sure-footed grace and levelheaded aggression. The standout track is obviously the whiplash PMA anthem "Bad Way", but the warped and fiery "Ego Death" and the hammer-headed optimism of "The Choice" can hold their own as crowd-killin' rampage rustlers even when stacked against the best of contemporary hardcore. We probably won't see another album from SickOnes for a minute (if ever), but what they've left us with is more than enough to cement their legacy.
