(Andy Synn presents Songs of Desire Armed, the upcoming second album by CLEARxCUT)
While my love of Hardcore has been well-documented by now, there are still certain things about it which don’t always sit right with me (and I don’t just mean karate-dancing in the pit, whose ignorant, “look at me”, attitude has always seemed antithetical to the communal mindset of the genre).
In particular, despite supposedly being founded on principles of brotherhood and community, a lot of Hardcore bands/fans can be rather elitist and exclusionary – especially when it comes to emphasising the “brother” part – and while there have been a lot of moves towards changing this in the years since I first got into the genre, there’s still a fair way to go until Hardcore as a whole will be able to truly say that it practices what it preaches.
There are, however, still a lot of bands who both talk the talk and walk the walk, and CLEARxCUT – a vegan, anarchist, anti-fascist and straight-edge Metallic Hardcore collective made up of, among others, both current and ex-members of Implore, King Apathy, and Heaven Shall Burn – are unequivocally one of those bands, expressing their beliefs and ideals not to exclude or impugn others but to engage and inspire by example.
