Fuck it, we're doing this again. The monthly hardcore column is back.
For those who don't know, I wrote a monthly hardcore column for about five years, and I stopped doing it last year. But I missed doing it, so now it's back. This month's edition is a freebie, but it'll be members-only after this month. Also, there's no live photo this time because there weren't any photographers at the Gumm show and it was too dark in there for me to take a phone picture that would look like anything other than an abstract smear.
At the beginning of every year, the attention of the hardcore world turns to Florida, where the world's most reckless moshers all converge for the FYA Festival. The videos are always fun, with all those people going berserk in that cavernous and brightly lit room. Naturally, most of the Instagram videos that showed up in my feed were Haywire-related. Haywire set the room off and then played one of those apocalyptic aftershows where they're in a clearing somewhere and motherfuckers are shooting fireworks into each other's faces or whatever. It looked fun. Whatever Haywire are doing at any given moment, it usually looks like fun.
You didn't have to be in Orlando to get something out of FYA. You didn't have to be obsessively scrolling Instagram last weekend, either. If you like hardcore and live on the East Coast, you can usually count on a bunch of bands storming through town on their way to or from FYA, which is nice. I seriously considered bringing this column back with a reflection on the Haywire moment, which would've meant hauling ass to Roanoke and back on a Tuesday night. That would've been two hours each way, during the first week back after the holidays. I had to admit to myself that I am not that psychotic. Sorry. Unsurprisingly enough, the Roanoke Haywire show, which appeared to take place in an abandoned WeWork, looked fun.
Instead, in an effort to break myself out of my showgoing funk, I made it out to finally catch a band I've been wanting to see for a long time, the ultra-sincere Chattanooga howlers Gumm. I think that band fucking rules. They're rough and scratchy and earnest. They play nasty riffs at punk speeds, and they've got hooks that don't smash you over the head with how hooky they are. Gumm's version of hardcore is probably my favorite kind. I like when bands never give the sense that they're goofing around. I like when every syllable comes off as the singer's expression of personal apocalypse. I like when bands pull from Turning Point and Revolution Summer-era DC without being too obvious about it. If an even remotely competent band messes around with that kind of sound, I'll probably like it a lot.
Gumm's place on the hardcore map isn't too far from what Mil-Spec or Method Of Doubt are doing, or what One Step Closer were doing until pretty recently. I love all that shit, and Gumm make doing is a pretty exceptional version of it. There's a messy punk urgency in records like Beneath The Wheel, which came out pretty quietly toward the end of last year. I don't get the sense that Gumm are all that close to the hardcore zeitgeist, but I don't care because they're close to my heart.
At the same time that all those bodies were flying around at FYA, Gumm played a pretty casual show in the side room of the Richmond burrito restaurant where they have shows sometimes. That's a small venue, and it drew a small crowd. I don't blame anyone for not coming out. At least some of the people who would've been down for a Gumm show might've been away at FYA. This was also a cold Sunday night in early January. People had work in the morning. The Golden Globes and the Wild Card Patriots/Chargers game and the Industry season premiere were all on TV. The people at the show were pretty subdued. Nobody did anything crazy. People in the crowd had to be instructed that they could move around if they wanted, which isn't a great sign for a hardcore show in Richmond. I still had a blast.
Gumm are just good. They move with purpose. They put everything into their live show even when the live show isn't especially lit. Their biggest moments can make your heart soar. For any band that cares enough to stay out on the road, I'm sure a lot of nights are like that one. Every show can't have a meme moment where someone jumps off a tractor roof or whatever. Some shows are just shows. I have so much respect for people who devote their lives to this thing, who put their hearts into a set for a few dozen people in a restaurant on a night when lots of people don't feel like coming out.
This particular small show was just one headliner and two local bands, and the local bands were good. Before Sunday night, I was unfamiliar with Heavens Die's game. Heavens Die come from Virginia and play a preposterously heavy version of metalcore. Sometimes, the riffs are so slow and evil that they might as well be doom metal. The vocals sound like demonic diarrhea burps. The band plays spooky samples in between songs. I thought they ruled. Heavens Die and Baltimore fastcore beasts Sinister Feeling just put out a split 7" on Delayed Gratification, and I think the Heavens Die side wins that one. The band sounds nothing like Gumm, but they kept talking about each other as brothers, as family. That's beautiful.
Openers Jailbird didn't really sound like the other bands, either. Jailbird make raw, nasty down-the-middle hardcore punk. Their riffs are fast and catchy, and they've got a song called "Can't Tell Me Shit" about how you can't tell them shit. Their singer booked the show, and he books a lot of shows around town. He's been doing that for years. He's even booked festivals. Shout out to him. That's hard work. I can't tell him shit.
This Gumm show wasn't momentous or anything, but I was just happy to be back out, doing shit like this. At the end of last year, I went a couple of months without going to any shows. The only time I saw hardcore bands was when they came through town on a tour with a bigger band — Gouge Away with Mannequin Pussy, Harm's Way and I Promised The World with Deafheaven, Balmora with Fleshwater and Chat Pile. (All those shows ruled, by the way.) I started this column mostly as a way to force myself to get off my ass and go to more shows. Then I stopped writing it and told myself that I'd still keep going to shows. That didn't happen. It's so easy to let that part of yourself atrophy, to stay in when you could go out. But my soul feels better when I'm going to see bands like Gumm, even when the shows themselves are relatively sedate affairs. Maybe yours does, too.
Angel Du$t - "I'm The Outside"
When I was at United Blood last year, I heard one guy say he was happy that Angel Du$t's set was coming up because it meant he could go take a shit. This was obviously very fucking funny, but I also thought it was wrong. The whole premise of Angel Du$t is that Justice Tripp, a legend forever for Trapped Under Ice, was going to do whatever he wanted and that it would still register as hardcore. Angel Du$t's recent tracks are among their toughest, and they're still adventurous. This one, for instance, starts off as bobby-surfy sha-la-la power-pop before the thunderous breakdown that sounds like Kurt Angle taking the straps down, except the hooks are still intact on the breakdown. That is not easy! That is a miracle! Angel Du$t's United Blood set ripped, and I hope that guy didn't miss it because he was taking a shit. I hope he took a shit during E.Town Concrete instead. [From Cold 2 The Touch, out 2/13 on Run For Cover.]
Commitment - "Dog Pound"
This fast, chaotic new Philly band has Soul Glo's Pierce Jordan on drums and Backslider's Jake Smith on guitar, and the pissed-off mutant-music aesthetic really is somewhere between Soul Glo's swaggering chaos and Backslider's rigorous barrage. It's some dense, ugly, cathartic shit. But the star here is frontwoman Tati Salazar, who's never been in a punk band before this and who roars about ripping dicks with charismatic ferocity. Don't play games with her. She will put your ear in the Boston crab. [From Fear Of, out 4/3 on Get Better.]
Converge - "We Were Never The Same"
It's not fair. Converge have been a band for [counts on fingers] 35 years now. You should not be able to continue kicking this much ass after 35 years. And Converge aren't just kicking ass. They're doing it without repeating themselves or sounding like anyone else. If Ben Koller played drums in a Roman galley to make people row those big oars, the empire never would've declined. Kurt Ballou's freaky splintered guitars sound like scrambled UFO messages. Nate Newton's bass tone could beat you up. I don't know how a bass tone could inflict physical damage on a human being, but I can tell you that this one could. Jacob Bannon looks like a pterodactyl, and he sounds like one, too. He sounds like an angry mother pterodactyl protecting her nest. It's fucking awesome. [From Love Is Not Enough, out 2/13 on Deathwish/Epitaph.]
Feels Like Heaven - "All That I've Got"
Three of the five members of this Stockholm band also play in Speedway, who make the same kind of bleeding-heart quasi-melodic hardcore as Gumm and Mil-Spec and some of the other bands mentioned up above. Feels Like Heaven do the same thing, but from a softer, more emo-adjacent perspective. Their song "Sandra Bullock" fucking rules, and not just because it's called "Sandra Bullock." It's not really a hardcore song, though. "All That I've Got"? That's a hardcore song. The whiny singsong parts make the soul-ripped screams hit that much harder, and vice versa. The breakdown won't truly sound complete until I hear the singer yelling for everyone to two-step, as if everyone wasn't already going to do that on their own. [From Within Dreams, out now on Scheme.]
King Nine - "On The Wire"
Long Island NYHC torch-carriers King Nine didn't play last year's United Blood, but frontman Dan Seely was there anyway, working I forget which merch table. That guy is huge. I was the tallest person in the room, but he was the second-tallest, easily, and he looks like a brick wall with a face. He could've balled me up and tossed me into a trash can like aluminum foil if he felt like it. Apparently, that guy works for AEW backstage, and it must be so weird for most of the wrestlers to know that this one non-wrestler on staff could beat their ass. The new King Nine tracks, their first in years, are classic judder-crush stompers. It's the kind of music that just works better when you know that the singer could beat anyone's ass. [From "On The Wire" b/w "It's Too Easy," out now on DAZE.]
Neolithic - "Your Demise"
Rhode Island's Neolithic just released their demo last year, but they have already achieved an elite level of evilness. "Your Demise" is an absolute fucking epic, a grand berserker tour of old-school NYHC tropes. They've got the slow, nasty intro into the fast, nasty verse. They've got the divebombs. They've got the surprisingly heroic shred-your-face guitar solos. They've got the basslines that sound like mysterious creatures moving in the shadows. They've got the lyrics about how you're gonna die, motherfucker! They might be a perfect band already. I have zero notes. [From Barbarism EP, out now on Streets Of Hate/Physical Therapy.]
Sin Against Sin - "Vomitous Strength"
Here's another new Northeast band who only have a couple of releases to their name but who have already figured out their thing to an absurd degree. Sin Against Sin make supremely ugly bad-vibes slam music, music where every decision is seemingly designed specifically to make it more dangerous to be in the audience at one of their shows. My favorite touch is the two vocalists, one low voice and one high voice, who usually sing the exact same thing at the exact same time, which has the cumulative effect of making all the vocals sound like Pazuzu from The Exorcist. My other favorite touch is the song title "Vomitous Strength." I just looked up "vomitous," and it's a real word. It means "nauseating." "Nauseating Strength" would also be a good song title, but I don't think it would hit quite this hard. I don't think it would hit with such vomitous strength. [From Demo 2, out now on Streets Of Hate.]
Violent Way - "A Need For Something More"
For the purposes of this column, oi counts as hardcore. I know they're distinct styles of music with their own subcultures and aesthetics and tradition, but there's plenty of overlap, and anyway I'm not writing a monthly oi column. That would require too many lifestyle changes. I'd need a whole new wardrobe. Buffalo's Violent Way have been making down-the-middle oi for a while now, and they're really good at it, to the point where they can find room for enough melody and emotion that I almost wonder whether they're secretly making pop music. Don't tell them I said that, though. [From A Need For Something More, self-released, out now.]
Wrong Side - "Policias Del Pensamiento"
Costa Rica's Wrong Side sit somewhere with the oi/hardcore Venn diagram, and they've also got surfy, trebley riffs and Joy Division-ass basslines. These things all belong together. They're cousins, and this is the family reunion where they all reunite and get drunk and yell in Spanish, probably about the government being evil. [From Temores EP, out now on Mendeku Diskak.]
Youth Avoiders - "This Is The Sound"
This is some real classic old-school fists-up punk rock from Paris. It's the kind of thing where I can imagine hundreds of people singing along in the sort of punk-house squat that's cleaner and more inviting than maybe my first seven apartments, though god knows that's not saying much. I've never been to a squat in France, but that's the image I've got in my head. Anyway, this song is good, and it would probably be in this month's column even if "Youth Avoiders" wasn't the best band name in the world. It is, though. It's so good. [From Defiance, out now on Destructure.]
