I won't even lie, I'm a total fanboy when it comes to Iron Lung Records. Aside from Iron Lung being one of the all time powerviolence greats at this point, their label is on a practically infinite streak of releases that at the absolute least I highly enjoy, and a lot of the time it's stuff that always makes my year end lists. New York band Persona's new MLP "Free Your Mind!" is definitely in the latter category, with 7 tracks of some of the most vicious hardcore I've heard all year played at absolutely insane speeds. The 7 songs on this record are absolutely relentless, boiling over like an erupting volcano of absolute hardcore/punk fury. This is easily some of the most urgent and sincere hardcore I've heard this year, and it's also some of the catchiest, and I find myself smashing that repeat button as soon as it's 11 minute runtime is through.
Rather than continue to wax poetic about how great this record is, I'd urge you to just have a listen for yourself. Anyone into raw, fast hardcore music should consider this an essential listen, it's just that damn good. I've included a stream via bandcamp below so you can hear this joint for yourself:
Well, this is definitely in the running for best hardcore/punk split of the year. 4 new songs each from blistering Romanian hardcore band Cold Brats and rising New Jersey powerhouse Gel. Cold Brats follow up their excellent compilation LP (also on Convulse Records) with the same killer raw hardcore fury as their previous output but turned up even louder and fiercer. Gel follows suite with a series of absolute pure stomp mosh ragers that serve as the perfect follow up to their earlier material and a sure sign of even more exciting things to come. You might have heard just about everyone getting excited about Gel lately, and if you don't get it yet, listen to these jams and you will soon enough. You can stream both sides of this split LP below via bandcamp:
With the advent of ever present social media and streaming services it's become easier than ever for great albums to slip through someone's radar, if only due to the sheer volume of new releases that drop every single week. I distinctly recall hearing a few songs off Chicago hardcore band Snuffed's debut LP "Coping Human Waste" when it came out in May, thinking it sounded really good and then spacing out on it. Obviously this was a huge error on my part, because in revisiting this album the last week it's consistently knocked me on my ass and I keep coming back for more. Chicago has always been a hotbed for some of the hardest hitting faster hardcore you can hear, and this LP is no exception. The 10 songs on this record are filled with some of the catchiest riffs and vicious performance you're likely to hear this year. Picture a caustic mixture of the blistering fastcore bands like CHEW, Coke Bust and Sick Fix colliding with the catchy, memorable riffing of American Nightmare or Suicide File, all through the lense of the blown out noise that raw punk bands such as D-Clone, Disclose and Gism. What really brings everything together is just how hard and passionate the band comes songwriting and performance wise. Everything that makes a perfect hardcore record energizing and addictive is on display here, and I highly recommend anyone that's interested in any of the above mentioned bands checks this out immediately.
Florida's metallic sludge unit Ether Coven have never been afraid to carve their own path. Featuring Peter Kowalsky, known for his fierce vocal performances in bands Remembering Never, Until The End and XBishopX, Ether Coven has always explored the more metal side of his love for extreme music, while still retaining the vicious metallic bite of previous bands. Their 2020 full length "Everything is Temporary Except Suffering" was as bleak and harrowing as the title suggested, pushing the band into further sonic experimentation with heavy leaning heavily into doom metal and shades of goth metal titans Type O Negative on the lengthier songs coupled with shorter blasts of metallic fury. They followed that release with "Language Is The Instrument of the Empire" with three songs that meshed all the different aspects of their sound into a formidable force and showcased the band's continued progression and growth. I'm happy to say that "The Relationship Between The Hammer and the Nail" is again a step up for the band and a continuation of this growth, pushing everything that makes this band a unique entity in extreme music further and culminating in what's easily their best material to date.
Opening with the insanely heavy "Psalm of Cancer" which along with much of the album lyrically touches on the battle with cancer that Kowalsky himself has been facing for several years, it's clear the band is intent on making their mark on extreme music known. Vocally, shades of Kowalsky's later work in bands like Remembering Never can be heard, but there is a heaviness both musically and lyrically that reaches far deeper into the darkness than those previous bands did. The first track's blistering pace seamlessly flows into the next song "Afraid & Suffering", an epic 10 minute dirge that's both crushingly heavy and hauntingly atmospheric and beautiful at times. This switch from song to song continues throughout the albums 7 songs, and rather than the combination of the shorter more fast paced metallic hardcore songs and the slower paced doom metal material feeling disjointed, everything impressively comes together in a way where it never feels like anything on the album is an outlier. Everything has it's place and lifts the album into it's own vibe and headspace, with a cohesion that can be hard to find with bands that so freely move between different genres.
The collaborative efforts on this album are also notable, with contributions from genre legends such as Dwid Hellion of Integrity, Dan Weyandt of Zao and Howard Jones of Blood Has Been Shed and Killswitch Engage, as well as Tarek Ahmed from unhinged and rising noise rock band Intercourse. Every vocalist contributes their own unique presence to their featured song, and it's clear that these features were well thought out with said vocalists in mind. It's exciting to see such well thought collaborative efforts put into motion as opposed to another artist being featured on a song for the sake of it, and brings to mind Converge's Axe To Fall in how well every feature has been executed.
With their new album, Ether Coven continue to prove they are an absolute force of a nature and one of the hardest hitting bands in extreme music currently. Anyone who's a fan of the darker side of hardcore and metal music owes themselves a listen to this record, and it's sure to be a memorable standout in a year that's already been huge for releases in the genre.
After releasing their excellent EP "Dream Deprivation" near the end of 2021, newer Florida crust/hardcore/punk band Walled City recently dropped "Crone" a brand new 2 song single that sounds like an amalgamation of Strike Anywhere and Tragedy, melodic and catchy but not losing that raw crust punk edge the latter band is cherished for. The band continues to lyrically deliver a fierce battle cry against fascism in all forms in these new songs, and these new songs more than match the urgency of those words. These two new songs are an extremely promising showcase for what's to come from the band, and you can stream them below via bandcamp:
As one of the first huge events/fest to come back around in the hardcore scene post social distancing and the lack of shows, January 2022's FYA Fest in Tampa, Florida was a cathartic experience for many, myself included. Out of the several standout sets I saw that weekend, the one from Baltimore's End It was among the top. I had heard the band's previous EP's and enjoyed them, but like many punk/hardcore the visceral passion and urgency from their live set solidified them as one of the most exciting current hardcore bands on my radar. Fast forward half a year and we have the band's new EP, Unpleasant Living, which not only builds on the foundation and momentum of their first two releases but barrels straight through it, with the band's most incendiary and hard hitting material to date.
End It has a true knack for writing incredibly catchy fast, heavy hardcore songs that wastes no time getting to the point and a message that hits like a sledgehammer. The six songs on Unpleasant Living come in at just under 8 minutes, but that's all the time End It needs to leave a lasting impression and to get their message across. Bringing time mind classic metallica hardcore greats like Leeway and Maximum Penalty fused with the volatile attitude of Trash Talk's earlier records, the band manages to walk the fine line between offering something fresh and paying respect and tribute to the genre they clearly love. It says a lot when the intro track B.C.H.C. goes harder than a lot of bands entire albums in it's 58 seconds. That intensity continues to build through it's brisk runtime all the way to the standout closing track "The Comeback" , a song that begins with an absolutely menacing introduction before transitioning to the breakneck pace featured on the rest of the record, culminating at the end with a crushingly heavy ending breakdown coupled with vocals that sum up the band's statement of intent perfectly:
"Baltimore's coming back with a bang, still knuckle dragging like it ain't no thing"
Plenty of hardcore bands are making waves nowadays and plenty of bands can lay claim to the typical genre tags of fast, hard and heavy, but End It display a true take no prisoners attitude that ensures they'll be turning heads anywhere they hit the stage. There's something for every fan of hardcore to latch on to and love here, and I'm looking forward to the band's next moves.
