Extreme music is an odd and fickle thing, constantly changing and moving through various trends and phases, constantly picking one subgenre has it’s acceptable choice to get in to the group, before slowly fading them into the background of life when it becomes apparent. You then name drop the band, letting people know that you knew and liked a certain band and a certain type of music before it was cool, making you cool for a time, until ultimately that band falls behind the curve, leaving you to find another band and another subgenre to exploit for selfish gains. I mention this because we are all guilty of it, and at the same time, it is the way we expand as people, learning about new ideas and bands, and help to create cornerstones for what we create ourselves. Continue Reading
Hardcore
All posts tagged Hardcore
Strap yourself in, we are about to stray into legitimate tl;dr territory my friends. In January of 2002, I found myself in Atlanta, Georgia sleeping in a warehouse of some kind that had been turned into every punk’s wet dream of DIY scene housing. Basically just a huge empty space where they could have shows in the middle, and little ad hoc bedrooms constructed along the walls. There were multiple hot plates. There was a living room “area” in the corner, because there was a rug and a couch. There was a pile of VHS tapes containing every episode of Mr. Show. There was someone’s dog hanging out. Continue Reading
Following two collaborations, two solo full lengths and a plethora of EPs, splits and singles, Trumpeting Ecstasy sees harsh grind death pioneers Full Of Hell entering a new era in sound. Following in the direction of the band’s Amber Mote… EP and their subsequently released split with Nails, Full Of Hell’s latest effort again leans towards the band’s death metal roots, inching farther from yet still retaining the group’s core musical identity. Imbued with higher registers of sound, greater emphases on technicality and death metal atmospherics, Trumpeting Ecstasy is a progressive, exultant exercise in sound. It pummels with a forward driving, almost-upbeat swagger with a surprising sense of form and accessibility that speaks to the instrumental mastery, sub-genre knowledge and cohesion of the band as a unit. Continue Reading
American Nervoso is Botch’s oft-overlooked, nearly always underrated first proper record. It appeared via seminal avant-hardcore label Hydra Head Records in 1998, and since about a year later, when the band released their best known album We Are the Romans, American Nervoso has dwelled in its shadow, like the ugly friend from Bette Midler’s Wind Beneath My Wings. Continue Reading
Scavengers is an upstate NY crust/hardcore band conceived in early 2016 by current and ex members of First Blood, Recon, Hell Mary, You and I, NY in 64, Lariat and Forgery. As you may have gathered from this (only partial) pedigree, these dudes are not only busy on the music front, but also may have been around the block a time or two. It turns out that is a crucial ingredient in churning out a fully competent and thoroughly blistering 20 minutes of crust laden hardcore, which they have in the form of their debut LP Progress to Oblivion. Continue Reading
Grounded in hardcore punk and merged with metal, powerviolence and grindcore, the 2007-born Nails exist to brutalize listeners on a single frequency: all hard, all heavy, all the time. With a complete lack of pretense and a singular primitive vision, Nails deal solely in scalding aggression, intentionally melding only the most vicious elements of each extreme music genre into a lean, pummeling concoction all their own. The result? An aural poisonous kool-aid unique in tone, composition and attack that has been consumed and hailed by extreme music fans and metal legends the world over. This June will bring forth You Will Never Be One Of Us, the third full length installment and Nuclear Blast Records debut from the group. I recently had the chance to chat with frontman Todd Jones about the new album, genre and identity, his career in hardcore, Slayer and more. Check it all out below. You Will Never Be One Of Us arrives on CD, cassette, vinyl and digital download this June 17th via Nuclear Blast Records. Continue Reading
Baltimore hardcore supergroup Angel Du$t (members of Turnstile, Trapped Under Ice, Mindset) have released “Upside Down”, the second single off of their upcoming sophomore record Rock The Fuck On Forever. “Upside Down” is a Ramones-inspired fun, melodic track that follows in the pop punk direction of the record’s first single. If the two singles released so far are any indication of what’s to come, Angel Du$t are poised to be one of the chillest sounds for this upcoming summer. Stream “Upside Down” and read more about the origins of the track via The Fader here and pre-order Upside Down via Grave Mistake Records here.
Rock The Fuck On Forever comes out on May 29th via Pop Wig Records. Sign up here to be notified when pre-orders for RTFOF drop.
Chicago hardcore unit Weekend Nachos have released “Writhe”, the first single off of their swansong record Apology, due for release on CD and digital formats on May 20th via Relapse Records. Recorded again by the band’s very own Andy Nelson at Bricktop Studios, Apology will close out the band’s decade long presence with a triumphant thirteen tracks of self-described “utter punishment… sounding more dangerous and urgent than ever before”.
Vocalist John Hoffman said this about the album,
“Honestly, it’s a really really good record. I was nervous the whole time we were writing it, because it was like ‘This is it…this is our swansong. I hope we aren’t scraping the bottom of the barrel here.’ Truth is, we did scrape the bottom of the barrel, and it was the very last of the great material we’re capable of.”
Stream “Writhe” below courtesy of Metalsucks and pre-order Apology on CD here and digital formats here. A separate tape release for Apology will emerge concurrently in May via Toxicbreed’s Funhouse and a vinyl release will come via Deep Six Records at a later date. Be sure to catch Weekend Nachos on their last tour dates with peers Primitive Man, Wormrot and The Afternoon Gentlemen, dates and details below. Continue Reading