(Andy Synn highlights his history with Hardcore, along with three recently-released gems)
I’ve mentioned it in passing before, I’m sure, but I don’t think I’ve ever really gone into how important Hardcore was as part of my formative years as a music fan (and still is to this day).
Like most of us, I’d imagine, my early forays into forming my own music taste were somewhat scattered and inconsistent, and it wasn’t until a school friend of mine (whose name I’ve song since forgotten) lent me a CD of various Metal and Hardcore acts, introducing me to bands like Earth Crisis, Zao, and Vision of Disorder – then a little later the likes of Shai Hulud, Ringworm, All Out War (all three of which I was lucky enough to get to see live again last year) – that I truly began to develop a sense of what I really liked (and didn’t).
It wasn’t just that these bands were loud, aggressive, and filled with the sort of energy that I needed back then (and still do now) it was the way they weren’t afraid to wear their ideals and beliefs loudly and proudly… standing for something as part of an actual counter-culture that prioritised things like collective resistance and communal action, rather than simply being against whatever the current “thing” was… that made me feel like this was music with more substance, more meaning, than what the mainstream charts at the time were full of.
And while my personal experiences with the wider “scene” weren’t quite so positive -the increasing presence of insular cliques and “crews” (with their mean-girls style “you’re not tough/cool enough to sit with us” vibes) and the growing emphasis on “conformity” over “community” (especially when it came down to judging the worthiness of someone’s “mosh style”) meant I once again found myself as an outsider amongst outsiders – I’m happy to see that there are still bands (and fans) out there fighting the good fight and standing up for what they believe in (and making some kick-ass music at the same time).
The reason I’m saying all this is because while I still love Hardcore, I don’t necessarily live Hardcore (and if you don’t know what that’s a reference to feel free to ask your parents), and for some people that’s enough to disqualify me from having an opinion on it… but that’s not going to stop me from highlighting as many bands as possible from across the ‘core spectrum (whether that’s Hardcore, Metalcore, Post-Hardcore, Screamo, Mathcore, etc) that I think our readers need to hear.
100 DEMONS – EMBRACE THE BLACK LIGHT
Of course, one band who absolutely does “live Hardcore” is 100 Demons, whose killer comeback album – their first in over 20 years – was released just over a week ago, to near-universal acclaim.
Even if you’re not familiar with the band’s earlier works, it’s likely that you’ve heard aspects of their sound at some point in the last two decades, as their self-titled 2004 album in particular was probably, at one point or another, “your favourite band’s favourite album”, and helped define the early 00s Metalcore sound (by which I mean the fusion of Metal and Hardcore, not… whatever the term has come to mean since then).
And with Embrace the Black Light the group are looking to remind people who they are and exactly what they’re capable of – and, by extension, what Metalcore “the old way” is all about – with 12 of the heaviest, heftiest, and hardest-hitting tracks of their career.
The likes of “The Nightmare” and “Meat for the Beast”, for example, approach the Death Metal/Hardcore divide that bands like Xibalba and Terminal Nation (and more) have helped popularise in recent years, while still retaining that primal punkiness that defined their earlier works, whereas beefy, bass-driven chug-monsters like “Made for Nothing” and “Night Parade of 100 Demons” and the stripped-down, sub-two minute sonic beating of “Nail It Shut” serve as a welcome reminder that 100 Demons are more than capable of letting the “Hardcore” part of “Metallic Hardcore” (or Metalcore, if you’d prefer to call it that) speak for itself.
Speaking of “Metalcore”, the likes of “Through Seven Eternities” and “The Cold Winds of the Crossroads” (with its mighty opening bellow of “breathing war!“) feel like a conscious attempt to reclaim the genre from the mainstream (even accounting for the unexpectedly desperate, yearning clean vocals in the latter) by re-establishing just how hard the formula – chunky, staccato rhythms and choppy, string-skipping riffs propelled by a plethora of crunchy kick-patters and driving, blast-and-d-beat drums – can still hit in the right hands.
Sure, not every hit is as hard as it probably could be (pounding pit-anthem “Foul”, for example, sets a very high bar which the subsequent strains of “Werewolves at the Wall” can’t quite manage to match) but if Embrace the Black Light proves one thing it’s that, even after 20 years, 100 Demons bite is just as badass as their bark.
HALCYON DAYS – NOTHING TO NO ONE // SOMETHING TO SOMEONE
It’s to their credit that Norwegian quartet Halcyon Days aren’t attempting to rewrite the book on Nothing to No One // Something to Someone, but are instead concentrating more on writing their own chapter in the annals of Melodic/Metallic Post-Hardcore (or whatever you want to call it).
As a result, rather than getting bogged down in unnecessary experimentation or desperate appeals for mainstream attention, the group instead have concentrated on simply crafting a collection of intensely infectious Hardcore anthems – book-ended, slightly confusingly, by “Something to Someone” at the start and “Nothing to No One” at the end – designed to tug at your heartstrings and get your blood pumping.
From the former’s potently melodic, powerfully metallic push-and-pull (reminiscent of early Thrice and/or Shai Hulud) to the latter’s irrepressibly punky energy and hooky intensity (which has shades of both Misery Signals and From Autumn to Ashes to it) the group lay it all on the line, throwing out punchy riffs and poignant (and subtly progggy) lead guitar work on “N.I.T.C” or marrying hard-edged rhythms with keening atmospherics on “My Heart Is My Compass” (whose captivating chorus refrain of “My heart is my compass, pointing in all directions / Lost in a labyrinth Of my own perception” is guaranteed to stick with you long after the song is over).
Wisely keeping things tight and focussed (the whole album clocks in at around the 33 minute mark), the group still manage to keep things from getting stale by shifting their stance back-and-forth between the two competing, contrasting sides of their sound, with the guest clean vocals on “Save Me From Myself” giving the song an Alexisonfire-esque sensibility, while the heavier, yet also unexpectedly haunting, strains of “Watch Me Burn” err more towards Howard Jones era Killswitch Engage (albeit without the soaring vocal histrionics).
Sure, this means that Nothing to No One // Something to Someone isn’t the most original sounding album out there – though I think I already said that – but what it may lack in originality it more than makes up for in pure passion and exceptional execution (late album highlight “Hands Full of Ruin” in particular is easily the equal of many of the band’s more famous forebears), marking Halcyon Days out as a band who may well have bigger and better things on the horizon.
ROMAN CANDLE – UNADULTERATED
I should admit, up front, that I bounced off Roman Candle‘s 2022 EP, Discount Fireworks, pretty hard, but whether it’s because I’m in a different headspace now or because the band have just become that much better (which they definitely have) I’ve fallen even harder for the scintillating sounds of Unadulterated.
While the band themselves acknowledge the likes of Touché Amoré and Poison the Well as influences – the formative fingerprints of the latter in particular are all over songs such as electrifying opener “Blasphemous Act” (with its increasingly desperate refrain of “Run for your life!“) and “Bite Harder Than You Bleed”), there’s also a fair bit of influence (directly or indirectly, to my ears at least) from the likes of Majority Rule, Pianos Become the Teeth, and… some other bands from the late 90s/early 00s Screamo/Metalcore scenes that I can’t quite put my finger on, even though it feels like their names are just on the tip of my tongue.
Of course, all questions of influences and inspirations aside, the group’s execution is what makes the aptly-named Unadulterated – because there’s not a moment here, not even during subdued, penultimate spoken-word piece “For Once My Hands Are Still”, that doesn’t feel like the band are giving it their all – such a thrilling ride, taking you from the heights of ecstatic rage to the doldrums of neurotic depression.
Obviously a lot of this is due to the raw, uncompromising (and, yes, unadulterated) performance of vocalist Piper Ferrari, whose visceral array of scorching screams and scalded shrieks, pained whispers and poetic speech (the shift from spoken-word introspection to throat-scraping expulsion during “Nothing Is Original” in particular is an outstanding display of dynamic emotional effort) provides the album with its most abrasively organic component, but one can’t (and shouldn’t) downplay the instrumental efforts of the rest of the band.
Whether that’s Jonas Vece’s shapeshifting fretwork during tracks like “Can We Watch Something Happy?” or “My Silence Costs More Than You Can Afford” – moving from melodic to discordant, from technical to punishing, at the drop of a hat – or Sergio Lopez’s finger-flexing bass-work on “This Band Has Led Me to Places I Wouldn’t Go With a Gun” or “I Can’t Stop Winning”, or the clever, complex, occasionally chaotic drum work of Alex Dupis (equally capable of easing back into the relative calm of “Lady Lazarus” as he is putting pedal to the metal during the cathartic “On Second Thoughts Maybe Gaslighting Is Real”), it’s clear that Unadulterted is a true team effort from start to finish, resulting in an album that’s far more than just the sum of its parts.