Good ol’ Kentucky has surely blessed us, no matter where we are. It has given us many great things, like Slint, Jack Harlow, Nicole Scherzinger (well, she was raised in Louisville and born in Hawaii, but that still counts), Kentucky Fried Chicken, and especially some of the best hardcore music to ever exist in the United States. While Knocked Loose have brought Kentucky hardcore to international acclaim, their humble beginnings in Oldham County represent just one facet of a scene that often gets overshadowed by the more established East and West Coast powerhouses. Think of the legendary Black Flag and Dead Kennedys from Los Angeles, or New York City's Madball, Agnostic Front, and Cro-Mags. Yet, as hardcore continues its explosive growth in coastal hotspots—with bands like Scowl, Sunami, Outta Pocket, and Big Boy dominating the Bay Area, and Pain of Truth and Combust running the streets of Long Island—Kentucky's own scene has been thriving just as fiercely, producing some of the genre's most thrilling and equally aggressive acts.
The breakdown is arguably at the heart of a lot of hardcore and metalcore these days, but it seems to me that the Kentucky bands really understand what it means to write a breakdown. This is especially true for Surfaced, the soon-to-be local legends with a lot to prove, who formed from the roughness of local performances and the heartbeat of camaraderie, and their new six-track EP, Where Angels Fear to Tread. Formed in 2022 from local performances and the bonds of friendship, Surfaced quickly gained traction through word-of-mouth, leading to their signing with Massachusetts-based 1126 Records and a continued circuit of shows in dive bars and clubs nationwide. The tracks off their early EPs, while are most certainly scientifically engineered to invoke a violent response, it’s the lyrical and thematic components off of Where Angels Fear to Tread practically begs listeners to look deeper into the violence, and disentangle its antagonistic tendencies.
The band appear to have put a lot more work into what they want to say on this new EP, or at least they're willing to be more open. After all, the members of Surfaced are dealing with a lot of personal anguish and growing pains as an upcoming band. It was critical in setting the tone, indicating the band's desire to make music that resonates on a deeper emotional level, far beyond the physical effect of someone's lifeless torso being hurled during a stage dive. "Wasted in Hatred"—which features Cody Dewald of Alberta metalcore superstars Serration—for example, depicts a calm tragedy that soon builds into something genuinely disturbing. This track, which is inspired by the loss of a beloved pet, converts sorrow into an unsettlingly heavy sound that would have had early 2000s metalcore bands frothing at the mouth in appreciation and jealousy.
Later, on “A Petal Of Ash”, the band spews scathing heresies like “Tear away from he who guides you / Let your sanity spill across the floor / Realize and scatter / When you find out there’s no savior at all”, which could also double as pull-quotes from a sick t-shirt you could get at a death metal concert in a random Florida dive bar. Similarly, "...The Weight You Chose To Carry" is possibly the gnarliest moment on the project, with a large portion of pig squeals and vocal abnormalities caused by inhumanly twisting and contorting one's vocal folds. Plus, the staggering guitar motifs bathed in the newly bequeathed rain (or at the very least field recordings of said downpour) are enough to arouse the carnal instincts of even the most reserved person in the crowd.
Yet while Surfaced adeptly channel their agnostic frustrations, they struggle with genuine vulnerability, or at least getting that across. The mature perspective they seem to strive for is undercut by a duality in their writing. Lines like "I never wanted you in my life" or "You don't know what it looks like / Inside my mind" on the aforementioned “Wasted in Hatred", come across less like raw and honest lyrics than one-liners from a teenager's Instagram story about their first breakup. This contrast creates this pervasive sense of immaturity, even though most people in the pit are probably too focused on trying not to get killed, or wailing their arms around like they're in a judo competition, to pay close attention to the lyrics anyway.
Where Angels Fear to Tread's sonic palette is geared for a sweaty basement show, fueled by a hedonistic helping of tempestuous riffs and turbulent rhythms that shift unpredictably from breakneck blast beats and chugging D-beats to heavy, groove-laden sections. Simple, direct, and occasionally "out-of-pocket" one-liners might be all that's required. I'm sure the band's focus was on that visceral experience, not on crafting intricate, multi-faceted poetry that will ultimately be drowned out by the sheer violence of their music. This EP is a knockout, but I'm hoping future releases give us lyrics that hit even harder than a one-liner—something that sticks with you after the pit closes.