Short bursts of off-kilter aggression have yet to go out of style for me. As much as I’ve gravitated toward longer and more complex music, I still periodically revisit my high school affinity for the ’00s mathgrind and noisecore scene. I was addicted to bands like An Albatross, iwrestledabearonce, and…
The Load In August may have been a relatively quiet month in terms of the volume of events I attended, but there can be no doubt that the quality has been exceptionally high. Having already spoken at length about Radar festival in my last column, I only have three more…
2017’s Hatred came and went with little to no fanfare, and that itself is a crime against music. We didn’t cover it here, so more fool us. Not this time though. Undercurrent, the new record from Japanese hardcore miscreants Friendship, demands the attention that Hatred might have gathered, were it…
This post has been a long time coming. We’ve been dropping hints here and there for years now about the growing underground scene in Israel, a scene which I, as a native of Tel Aviv, am well poised to explore. Interestingly enough, this has become less and less obvious as…
I Will Guide Thy Hand, the debut LP of Indianapolis-based OLAM, is uncompromisingly ferocious hardcore, recalling Botch or the harder edges of Converge; the album is propelled by galloping drums, sharp shrieks and jagged riffing, songs frequently interspersed with slower brooding moments or a strategically patient bridge. I Will Guide…
Thrash and hardcore seemed to have this huge crossover a few years ago with Iron Reagan, Municipal Waste et al all dishing out dive-bombing, riff-fueled batterings, album after album; music to the ears of patched denim jackets across the world. A lot of the fallout from this resurgence, unfortunately, ended…
My initial impressions of portrayal of guilt, mostly based off their self-titled EP, were that the band bore compelling similarities to You Fail Me-era Converge. Holistically, both releases invoke the sense of urgency in the aftermath of trauma (something arguably still present in Let Pain Be Your Guide); more specifically,…
Denmark is home to a particular scene of hardcore-meets-sludge that contains heavy-hitters such as The Psyke Project (sadly no longer), Hexis, and LLNN. I was very pleased to discover that We Are Among Storms, featuring members from the first two bands as well as Église, had popped up with a four-track EP that…
Trying to convince some of the staff at Heavy Blog that hardcore can be great isn’t the nightmarish task it probably could be. Thankfully, outside of the rare shitpost thread, opinions and feelings about genres are shared genially; almost lovingly, at times. Everyone knows not to try and beat a…
The UK is built for boring weather; the kind of weather where it’s not really nasty enough to warrant staying inside, but not really nice enough to make it worth going out, either. Basically, weather we can grumble about in queues before we get bored and go off and colonise…
