Category: hardcore punk

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Index Shares a Bruising and Forceful Ripper

Formed last year, and currently split between Los Angeles and Philadelphia, Index — Alan Creedon (he/him) and Alex Lichtenauer (they/them) — is a subversive, electronics-influenced hardcore punk band featuring two close friends, who are also former members of Control Top, an act that I’ve covered here on this site. When Creedon and Lichtanauer started the band, it quickly became clear that their band’s sound would grow out of their friendship. Stripping away the dense orchestration of their previous band, Index sees the duo leaning into sweaty, visceral physicality with Creedon’s guitar intuitively locked into Lichtanauer’s drums, navigating complex rhythms. The result is music that feels as immediate as it does immediate — with the two longtime collaborators and friends reinvigorated by the act of creating something altogether new together.

Produced by Arthur Rizk, the duo’s debut single “Cellophane” was written across coasts, recorded at Show Me The Body‘s Corpus Studios and released through Lichtanaeur’s Get Better Records. The single is a bruising, eardrum shattering ripper that pairs snarling and roaring hardcore punk fury with pummeling rhythm and howled vocals. “Cellophane” captures someone barely holding it together in a brutal, absurdist hellscape. It’s the sort of song that would turn a room into a sweaty, moving mass of bodies.

“‘Cellophane’ is a song about self-deception and the rituals we perform to convince ourselves we’re holding it together,” the bicoastal based duo explain. “Musically, we wanted to move away from anything riff-based and write in a way that felt fluid and unstable. The two of us function as a single organism, threading through shifting time signatures rather than locking into them. We were interested in the physicality of electronic body music pushed through a hardcore framework. Something precise and controlled, but still capable of impact in a room.”

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 64th Birthday, Brett Gurewitz!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Bad Religion co-founder and guitarist, and Epitaph Records founder Brett Gurewitz’s 64th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Truck Violence Shares Urgent and Bruising “New Jesus”

Acclaimed and rising Montréal-based experimental act Truck Violence — founding duo Karysn Henderson (vocals) and Paul Lecours (guitar, banjo, production), along with Chris Clegg (bass, banjo) and Thomas Hart (drums and slide guitar) — can trace their origins back to its founding duo’s childhood: Henderson and Lecours grew up in a small, French Canadian town of 600 people, graduating in a class of nine. By the time they both turned 15, they were running a local studio and radio station. There was no industry support, no infrastructure, no template for what they were trying to do, only the work itself — and the conviction that it was worth doing.

When the pair turned 17, they relocated to Montréal, where they met Chris Clegg and Thomas Hart, who hail from different corners of the country and began building their band from the ground up.

The Canadian quartet’s highly anticipated sophomore album, The weathervane is my body is slated for a June 26, 2026 release through San Francisco-based label The Flenser and Montréal-based Mothland. Their sophomore album is reportedly a product of the process of building the band from the ground up. The album’s creative and writing process, the recording, the mixing and visuals were all produced employing a fiercely DIY process. This isn’t done as an aesthetic choice or a marketing angel, it’s because for the band, it’s the only honest option album.

The album’s cover art was shot on film by the band on Montréal’s Avenue du Parc. A figure perches atop a small Québécois-style house, hand built from reclaimed materials, spine curved, legs pulled in, bare-backed against a skyline that dwarfs everything beneath it. A rural thing dropped into the grit of a big city, small and out of place yet refusing to disappear. The body is naked and defenseless, open to the environment and every stimuli the world can deliver upon it.

Thematically, the album is a continuation and expansion of the angry statement of purpose of their debut, 2024’s Violence. Rooted in noise rock and post-hardcore traditions, the album is uncompromising in its refusal to be anything other than what is: immediate, self-determined and built entirely by the hands that imagined it.

The weathervane is my body‘s latest single “New Jesus” is a bruising and furious howl of desperation and disgust that’s urgent and is meant to shake the listener out of the doldrums of apathy and indifference.

“New Jesus” is a rant about the blatant fascistic slide occurring both to the south of our border and on screen. It is loosely about the ABC—Trump settlement and the post-January 6th election fraud cases,” Truck Violence’s Karsyn Henderson explains. “The lack of any broader moral compulsions beyond centralizing power on the political right has led to a culture of post-truth, where there is no reward in accuracy unless it leads to an augmenting of one’s political capital, which it rarely does. This is as destructive in politics as it is in art. There is surprising apathy among young people in regards to this slide, who believe the acquisition of power and the subsequent lording over that occurs, is merely nature, essentially; what will happen, will happen. With these lines of thinking, you find more people sympathetic to this mode, if it is both natural and inevitable, why not acclimate and reap the rewards. Why not join the fascist grift, degenerate art through tiktok, etc…”

Directed by Kirill Sommer, the accompanying video for “New Jesus” is a surrealistic fever dream that’s seemingly one-part Samuel Beckett play, one-part psilocybin trip, one-part Ingmar Bergman film.

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Lip Critic Shares Tense and Bruising “Talon”

With the release of 2024’s Partisan Records debut, Hex Dealer, NYC-based hardcore outfit Lip Critic –Bret Kaser (vocals, synths, mixing), Connor Kleitz (synths, vocals), Danny Eberle (drums) and Ilan Natter (drums, mixing) — firmly established the act as a ferocious, standout creative force, earning praise from international renowned outlets like Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, NME and Paste.

Building upon a growing profile, the quartet continued a relentless touring schedule while releasing standalone singles “Mirror Match” and “Second Life.” Their reach expanded with a remix of an IDLES track that was featured in Darren Aronofsky’s 2025 film, Caught Stealing.

Their highly-anticipated third album, Theft World is slated for a May 1, 2026 release through Partisan Records. While touring to support their debut album, Lip Critic’s frontman Bret Kaser discovered his identity had been stolen, with someone using his information to make hundreds of purchases, including the band’s entire discography. When Kaser eventually tracked this person down, he found a young fan, who believed he uncovered a hidden puzzle embedded in Lip Critic’s music and had effectively “won” some larger, cryptic game. That encounter became the foundation for Theft World, a concept album that sees the band channeling themes of digital obsession, misinterpretation and fractured identity into something chaotic but sharply intentional. Theft is explored as a political, digital and emotional condition.

Produced by the band’s Kaser and Connor Kleitz, the album reportedly sees the band refining Hex Dealer‘s chaos into a focused, fully locked-in statement. Driven by the forceful rhythmic assault of two drummers, a lightning-struck sampler and Kaser’s paranoid-preacher-like delivery, the album features colliding club rhythms and hardcore breakdowns into a sound continually torn apart and resold.

“Talon,” Theft World‘s penultimate pre-release single is a woozy, nauseating lurching churn evoking the relentlessly unceasing and seemingly inevitable horror and brutality of a world in which you’re constantly connected to banal, mind-rotting entertainment and soul-numbing atrocities. Scroll past the influencers, memes, dances and challenges to images of fights at a McDonald’s, senseless murder, genocide and others crimes against humanity and then back — every single day. “Talon” captures the paralysis and Kafkaesque hell of overexposure and what it all does to our hearts and souls.

“‘Talon’ is a song about scrolling through hell,” the band explains. “Traversing an absurd and violent world at 1000 mph in a go-kart your friend’s dad modded based off a YouTube video.”

Directed by Colter Fellows, the accompanying video for “Talon” is a mix of digital glitch and slick, hyper modern editing and camera work and drones that captures the lurching paranoia, unease and violence of our moment.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Black History Month!/Happy 68th Birthday, Ice-T!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Ice-T’s 68th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy 65th Birthday, Henry Rollins!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Henry Rollins’ 65th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Black History Month!/Happy 70th Birthday, H.R.!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month — and punk pioneer H.R.’s 70th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Happy Black History Month/Happy 69th Birthday, H.R.!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and Bad Brains frontman H.R.’s 69th birthday.

Video by William Ruben Helms

Throwback: Black History Month: Bad Brains/Happy 68th Birthday, H.R.!

JOVM’s William Ruben Helms celebrates Black History Month and celebrates Bad Brains’ H.R.’s 68th birthday.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Comprised of Jay Sillence (vocals), Max Watt (guitar, vocals), Dani Barge (bass) and Dom Smith (drums), the up-and-coming York, UK-based hardcore metal act SEEP AWAY cite Black Flag, Cancer Bats, Bongripper, Turnstile, God Damn, Soulfly and Marilyn Manson as influences on their sound and approach. And in a relatively short period of time, the York-based quartet have begun to develop a reputation for being one of the region’s hardest working bands — and for a sound that may remind many listeners to Follow the Leader-era Korn and others.

Building on a growing profile, the band’s debut effort, The Blackened Carnival of Societal Ineptitude is slated for an early 2018 release, and the album’s first single is an explosive and feral cover of what may arguably be one of the greatest songs in the history of hip-hop — Ol’ Dirty Bastard‘s “Shimmy Shimmy Ya.” And I suspect that it would make ODB very proud while being mosh pit worthy.

 

 

 

 

 

Video by William Ruben Helms

New Video: Working Out with Pissed Jeans in “The Bar Is Low”

Comprised of Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums), the Allentown, PA-based hardcore punk/noise rock quartet Pissed Jeans can trace their origins to when the members of the band met while attending Allentown’s Nazareth High School. Bonding over their initial desire to create, as the band’s Matt Korvette has explained, “a different kind of punk focused on dead-ended carnal cravings, sexual depression . . .” and to “bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous, droning rock music that just sucks the energy of out, the musical equivalent of watching a toilet flush.” And over the course of their 13 years together as a band, they’ve released several 7 inches and four, full-length studio albums, all which have cemented their reputation for crafting a sound that’s a sludgy, furious, and punishing cretinous, troglodyte stomp that subtly nods at The Stooges, The Ramones and 80s hardcore punk and post-hardcore bands — while evoking the deep primal urges of our reptilian sub-brains.

With the band’s recently released fifth, full-length album Why Love Now, the Allentown, PA-based band focuses on the mundane comforts and discomforts of modern life — from fetish websites to office supply deliveries; to the emptiness, confusion, dissatisfaction and convoluted nature of modern relationships and our contemporary world of hypocrisy and bullshit. As Korvette explains in press notes on the new album, “Rock bands can retreat to the safety of what rock bands usually sing about. So 60 years from now, when no one has a telephone, bands will be writing songs like, ‘I’m waiting for her to call me on my telephone.’ Kids are going to be like, ‘Grandpa, tell me, what was that?’ I’d rather not shy away from talking about the Internet or interactions in 2016.”

Why Love Now’s incendiary and furious first single “The Bar Is Low” will further cement the band’s reputation for crating sludgy and bludgeoning cretinous trogolydte stomp-like anthems in which Korvette’s guttural, Lemmy Kilmister-like growling is paired with with pummeling drumming, a throbbing and insistent bass line, and blistering guitar chords to evoke a knuckle dragging, slack-jawed Neanderthal on the hunt. According to Korvette, the song is “about how every guy seems to be revealing themselves as a shithead. It seems like every guy is getting outed,” Korvette continues, “across every board of entertainment and politics and music. There’s no guy that isn’t a total creep. You’re like, ‘No, he’s just a dude that hits on drunk girls and has sex with them when they’re asleep.’ Cool, he’s just an average shithead.” Throughout the song, Korvette and company point out that stereotypical concepts of straight male, masculinity is defeating, empty, and clownish.

Directed by Joe Stakun, the recently released video follows the members of the band at the gym; but they don’t know how to properly use any of the equipment. And while there, the band begins an absurd and ridiculous competition with other gym goers that ends up with a hilarious and horrifying conclusion.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

New Audio: Pissed Jeans’ Furious and Pummeling Single “The Bar Is Low”

Comprised of Matt Korvette (vocals), Brad Fry (guitar), Randy Huth (bass) and Sean McGuinness (drums), the Allentown, PA-based hardcore punk/noise rock quartet Pissed Jeans can trace their origins to when the members of the band met while attending Allentown’s Nazareth High School. Bonding over their initial desire to create, as the band’s Matt Korvette has explained, “a different kind of punk focused on dead-ended carnal cravings, sexual depression . . . that sort of thing. Mainly, we just wanted to bludgeon the listener with dull, monotonous, droning rock music that just sucks the energy out of you, the musical equivalent to watching a toilet flush.” And over the course of their 13 years together, the band has released several 7 inches and four full-length studio albums, all which have cemented their reputation for crafting a sound that’s a sludgy, furious, and punishing cretin stomp that subtly nods at The Stooges, The Ramones and 80s hardcore punk and post-hardcore bands — while evoking deep primal urges.

With the band’s forthcoming fifth, full-length Why Love Now, which is slated for a February 24, 2017 release through renowned indie label Sub Pop Records, the Allentown, PA-based focuses on the mundane comforts and discomforts of modern life — from fetish welcomes to office supply deliveries; to the emptiness, confusion and dissatisfaction of modern relationships, contemporary hypocrisy and bullshit. As Korvette explains in press notes on the new album, “Rock bands can retreat to the safety of what rock bands usually sing about. So 60 years from now, when no one has a telephone, bands will be writing songs like, ‘I’m waiting for her to call me on my telephone.’ Kids are going to be like, ‘Grandpa, tell me, what was that?’ I’d rather not shy away from talking about the internet or interactions in 2016.”

Why Love Now’s incendiary and furious first single “The Bar Is Low” will further cement the band’s reputation for crating sludgy and bludgeoning cretin stomp-like anthems in which Korvette’s guttural, Lemmy Kilmister-like growling is paired with with pummeling drumming, a throbbing and insistent bass line, angular and blistering guitar chords to evoke a knuckle dragging, slack-jawed Neanderthal on the hunt. According to Korvette, the song is “about how every guy seems to be revealing themselves as a shithead.”

“It seems like every guy is getting outed,” Korvette continues, “across every board of entertainment and politics and music. There’s no guy that isn’t a total creep. You’re like, ‘No, he’s just a dude that hits on drunk girls and has sex with them when they’re asleep.’ Cool, he’s just an average shithead.” Throughout the song, Korvette and company point out that stereotypical concepts of straight male, masculinity is defeating and clownish.

Single Review by William Ruben Helms

Featuring founding members frontman Martin Farkas and Jonah Falco (who splits his time as the drummer in renowned act punk act Fucked Up), Career Suicide is a Toronto, ON-based hardcore punk band that formed back in 2001 that has recorded several records and played shows all over the world. The band’s forthcoming full-length effort Machine Response is slated for a February 24, 2017 release, and the album is the much-anticipated follow-up to their blistering and critically applauded effort Attempted Suicide. The forthcoming album finds the band’s newest lineup — founding members Farkas and Falco along with  Dallas Good (guitar), who has played with The Sadies, Andre Williams, John Doe, Half Japanese, Elevator and others and occasional vocals from Souichi Hisatake, a member of Forward, GISM, Insane Youth, Gudon and others furthering the band’s long-held reputation for blistering, furious, acidic and mosh pit worthy punk rock as you’ll hear on Machine Response’s latest single “Suffocate,” a single that lyrically and sonically evokes the sensation of claustrophobia and desperation.