Hardcore Hangout: Punitive Damage, The Mall, Hacker, Crisis Man, Squint, Cleaver, GridIron, & Broken Vow

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! 

Punitive Damage - This is the Blackout (Atomic Action!)

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.

The Mall - Time Vehicle Earth (Self-Released)

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) 

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)

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.

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).