Chasing Fridays: Queensway, Missing Link, Snõõper, more
A hardcore-exclusive issue of my weekly column. Few music reviews, couple gig write-ups, lots of thoughts on aggressive music.
Welcome back to Chasing Fridays, motherfucker. Wake the fuck up and start moshing. It's been a minute since I've dedicated significant space on this blog to hardcore music, so I decided to make this week's Chasing Fridays roundup exclusively about that. I reviewed a few recent hardcore releases that have/haven't been doing it for me, and then wrote up a couple hardcore-ish shows I attended over the last few days.
If you were hoping for more shoegaze writing from me this week, never fear. My latest shoegaze feature (and last for the foreseeable future, while I write this book) was published this week via the very cool music publication Nina. It's about the collision of shoegaze and digicore, a trend that started formulating last year via jane remover and quannnic, and has only grown in 2024 via new albums by twikipedia, Fax Gang/Parannoul, and others. Some of the my favorite music from the last year-plus is happening in that space, and I had fun writing about it for that article.
If you like what I wrote down below, or anything else I've ever published on Chasing Sundays, then I'd appreciate it if you subscribed at the $5/month tier. My paid subscribers (thank you!) provide me with a crucial income stream so I can maximize the number of hours I dedicate to this blog, and also just writing in general. I'm very fortunate to make my living with words, but that's getting harder and harder in this economic climate, so any support is greatly appreciated.
Queensway - Of Flesh, Bone, And...Baltimore Blood
Queensway are a Baltimore band whose pummeling metallic hardcore sound was a few years ahead of the post-COVID curve toward unrelenting heaviness. They've been pretty quiet over the last few years, but this week they returned with a couple new tracks on Daze Records, "Of Flesh, Bone, And..." and "Baltimore Blood." They fucking smoke. Baltimore has a long history of dark, gritty hardcore that doesn't feel like a put-on (Next Step Up, Stout, Trapped Under Ice), and Queensway have always fit into that lineage for me. The groove on the first track is spine-shiveringly sinister, and the vocals recall Obituary's John Tardy without taking the song out of hardcore. "Baltimore Blood" is downright nasty, with an extended intro that's bound to have people stalking from side to side before the moshing even begins. Rather than trying to be the most extreme band in hardcore, Queensway put their energy into building foreboding atmosphere. These songs just sound scary.
Risk - Demonstration of Destruction 2024
Earlier this year, I made sure to include Risk in my scene report on the next wave of Massachusetts hardcore, even though they've been around for well over a decade now. Despite being Boston stalwarts, they still feel like a band on the come-up in a national sense, and I'm genuinely curious to see if these new tracks will earn them any legitimate hype. Risk play a somewhat un-trendy style of hardcore that's thrashy but not metallic; two-steppy but only a little bit. These new tracks, out via Triple B, are each a minute longer than they need to be and contain way too much empty space where their vocalist, who has an unusual shriek, should be letting it rip. The guest spots from their pals in Street Power (incredible band) and Fool's Game (really great band) feel somewhat superfluous.
I saw Risk get a weird reaction at a beatdown fest late last year where the crowd didn't really know what to do during their set. Hardcore's in a strange spot right now where it feels like a band either has to be old-school fast or new-school heavy for people to dig it, and Risk are neither of those things. In theory, that affords them the opportunity to stand out, but I don't think Demonstration of Destruction really makes a strong case that what they're doing is vital. I really enjoyed this band's set at This Is Hardcore 2023, but as I felt about their 2022 LP and last year's split with Fool's Game, I just wish the material itself was more interesting. Still, there's a charm to this band that makes me keep coming back for more. We'll see where that leads.
Condition One - Another Hopeless Prayer
The Bay Area continues to be one of the most fertile regions in the world for knuckle-mashing metallic hardcore. The 2020s have given rise to Sunami, Big Boy, Outta Pocket, and now San Jose's Condition One, who sound like Hands of God for kids who buy marked-up Adrienne merch on Depop. This new EP is guitar lead beatdown with production that's just cruddy enough to assure you there's no Bleeding Through bullshit in their DNA. It's got mosh parts that are cruel and vocals that remind me of what I love about that Resentment EP from earlier this year (Shattered Realm influence). I imagine these songs create war zones on the West Coast, and if Condition One play an East Coast fest sometime in the next year I'll be making a point to catch them.
Human Garbage - Valley's Most Hated
Speaking of California hardcore bands that're straight-up scary: Human Garbage's new LP is probably (?) my favorite hardcore full-length of this very odd year for hardcore full-lengths (not very many great ones). I really liked their 2023 LP, Straight Not Giving a Fuck, but Valley's Most Hated is so much better — harder, catchier, heavier, more emotionally gripping — that I'm honestly impressed they pulled it off. The opening track ends with the line, "I know I'm hard to live with/But living's a problem for me," which is so fucking emo and delivered in a way that feels straight out of 2002. This whole record is going for the Internal Affairs/Piece By Piece style of fast 'n' nasty L.A. hardcore from the early 2000s, except it's also heavy enough to compete with almost any Terror record, which makes it feel contemporary in a way that their primary influences don't at this moment. I'm not hearing anything on the East Coast right now that sounds like this, so it's cool to hear a regionally distinct flavor of hardcore that's blending different eras in a refreshing way.
Confusion's Prince - Confusion's Prince
Bandcamp New & Notable Jul 14, 2024
Every few months, the Atlanta "democore" label Designated Mosher's Unit drops a three-pack of new releases. Usually, the music is only available to listen to on Bandcamp and the small number of cassettes they press, and unless you're so tapped into hardcore that you know which local bands are popping in cities like Syracuse, NY, and Portland, Maine, then you probably have no idea who these bands are. However, if you have an affinity for the more classic side of hardcore (I.E. hardcore that sounds like the 1980s), then DMU might be your favorite new label.
This week, DMU unloaded another trio of releases, and my favorite was this LP from Birmingham, Alabama's Confusion's Prince. With a guest feature from Integrity singer Dwid Hellion on the song "Place the Blame," it might be the most "high profile" release in the DMU catalog so far. Based on the small amount of research I did, it seems like Confusion's Prince are pretty renowned in the Birmingham scene right now. They play fast, stompy, abrasive, crudely-recorded hardcore that's hard to pin down to one specific influence. Despite the Integrity feature, they're not a metallic hardcore band, but there are heavy parts on here. There're also some unexpected flecks of guitar melody that kind of remind me of Destiny Bond. It's angry, it's no-frills, and it's not for the casuals.
The Acacia Strain, Missing Link, Pure Bliss, Princess @ Preserving Underground
If you told the Eli that existed between the ages of 21 and 27 that he'd be seeing the Acacia Strain three times within the span of a year at the end of his twenties, and that he'd genuinely enjoy each one of those performances, then he wouldn't have believed you. But life is full of surprises. The deathcore pioneers were big for me in the first half of the 2010s, and some of the most violent shows I've ever seen were Acacia Strain gigs at the 200-cap Bogies venue (RIP) in Albany, NY. Unlike so many of their peers whose popularity/credibility/musical quality tanked by the mid-2010s, the Acacia Strain played their cards right by keeping an elbow in hardcore during that time. They were right there on the outskirts of the genre in the late 2010s, feeding new kids into hardcore right before the post-COVID explosion, and then reasserting themselves as relevant elder statesmen in the 2020s by taking hardcore bands on tour, collaborating with hardcore musicians on their records, and actually making pretty good music (2020's Slow Decay and their pair of 2023 records, Step into the Light and Failure Will Follow, are among their best).
Now, old-school deathcore is being grandfathered into the canon of Acceptable Influences for young hardcore bands, so The Acacia Strain are not only nostalgically fashionable, but also currently relevant. And I've gotta say, seeing this band perform to a room full of buck-wild moshers, stage-divers, and mic-grabbers is fucking thrilling. I saw them play with Integrity last spring, and then again with Dying Fetus in the fall, and both times I was floored by the band's musical competence, their natural showmanship, and their humble attitude. They're not rockstars. They're not trying to convince you they're something other than what they are: a breakdown factory. They know exactly what their product is and they know exactly how to sell it. Earlier this week, I once again had a blast howling along to "Beast," "The Hills Have Eyes," and "Woah! Shut It Down," and then stepping back to watch the multi-generational room (mostly folks who were younger than me) eat up the new shit with equal fervor. If you have even the slightest tolerance for deathcore, their show is undeniable.
The rest of the night was a telling temperature check for where the heavy side of Pittsburgh hardcore is currently at. Fights are routine at every show I've recently gone to at this venue, and there was some dumbass scuffle during each one of the opening sets. Princess, the fastest-growing band in Pittsburgh hardcore, who have the biggest crossover potential in the scene right now, did a pretty good job filling the biggest room they've ever played with their punk-inflected sound. They're still finding their confidence, but their live sound is there and every touring band they play with are ecstatic to be sharing the stage with them. Syracuse's Pure Bliss caught my ear with their 2023 EP The Age of Judgment, and their Crowbar-core really went over with this crowd. The floor was active for their whole set, and some of their mosh parts were so fucking vicious that I just had to jump in there myself.
NY's Missing Link already have a reputation for eliciting some of the most violent sets at fests this side of the pandemic, and clearly their debut album (released last month on Triple B) is resonating, because people were grabbing the mic and mouthing along from the back of the pit. I really enjoyed every set of the night, but it's frustrating to see fights between new-jack push-pitters and dancefloor kingpins break up the fun every 20 minutes. The Pittsburgh scene remains stronger than it's been in years, but the negative energy I've been clocking at recent shows makes me worry about its longevity. Too much testosterone and bullshit egos; not enough focus on good mosh style. I hope the brutes figure out how to control themselves before things become irreparably fractured.
Snõõper, Illiterates, Big Baby @ Bottle Rocket
Snõõper are a band who I wouldn't call myself a legitimate fan of, but who I knew I had to see. The Nashville egg punk group are signed to Jack White's Third Man Records and have the sort of growing profile that makes me think they're about to be the token Punk Band on fests like Coachella and Bonnaroo. It's easy to see why. Their sound falls somewhere between Devo, Le Tigre, and egg punk luminaries Lumpy and the Dumpers; vivacious and silly, catchy and shreddy, kooky and inviting. Their stage show is like a Pee-wee's Playhouse set. The four instrument-holders were decked out in Eighties track suits, while singer Blair Tramel donned angular sunglasses and jumped around like a maniac while singing about company cars and fruit flies. On stage right, there was a makeshift arcade game with a screen on it that was projecting live footage of the crowd, and stage left had a huge telephone that looked like it was made out of paper mache. During the last song, Tramel dashed offstage and put on a giant, nine-foot-tall costume of a smiling fruit fly and danced around in the middle of the room while her bandmates torched a succulent post-punk groove.
It was the kind of show where I didn't know a single lyric they were singing yet still felt like I was part of Snõõper's weird, happy family. Openers Big Baby play a similarly endearing form of tuneful, spartan punk, and Illiterates are a hardcore punk band who sound like Youth of Today crossed with Jerry's Kids. They were the perfect warm-ups for what Snõõper were going to bring later in the eve; a set that felt classic hardcore in spirit, but was definitively punk in sound. I recognized a lot of people from local crust haunt the Rock Room in the crowd, but just as many folks were indie-leaning kids who I'd never seen at hardcore shows around here, but who were head-over-heels stoked on Snõõper. I even saw a couple boomer-age punks, including a gray-beard rocking a Devo energy dome hat. Everyone was out for Snõõper. I'm glad I was, too.