There’s a certain kind of hardcore that just punches you right in the soul. That’s the kind that Mil-Spec make. Mil-Spec, a Toronto band that’s been putting out music since 2018, have a raw and emotive style. They can be melodic and even pretty, but they can also riff like monsters. Frontman Andre Peden has a huge, choked scream-sob of a voice, and he delivers every line with ferocious urgency. The band’s sound is rooted in hardcore history, especially in stuff from the late ’80s and early ’90s. But they way they play it, it’s fresh and ferocious and vital.

Up until now, Mil-Spec have released demos and compilation tracks and a couple of EPs: 2017’s When The Fever Broke… and 2018’s Changes. Today, the band comes out with World House, their first full-length LP. It’s a monster. I’m just utterly bowled over by this thing. It’s exactly what I needed this morning.

World House isn’t a long record — eight songs, 22 minutes — but it gives Mil-Spec room to branch out, to expand their sound and get into dreamy little interludes in between the scream-along moments. It’s the sound of a band fully understanding and embracing its own power. Mil-Spec are releasing the album along with Millenarian Spectacle an 88-page magazine with photos and annotated lyrics and manifestos and (I swear to god) movie reviews, which rules. But the thing you really need in your life is the music itself, and you can stream that below.

World House is out now on Lockin’ Out Records.