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Trenchfoot - At the Mercy of Circumstance (Album Stream)

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Name one person you know who has never been the victim of circumstance.

It’s not a trick exercise, I’m just curious; the introduction has nothing to do with New York crossover band Trenchfoot with the tenuous exception that At the Mercy of Circumstance is the title of the band’s forthcoming debut album.

As you might have surmised by the cover art, Trenchfoot play a noisy feedback-driven style of hardcore that takes some rhythmic cues from thrash metal. Once upon a time people might have called this “crossover,” but at this point it seems like the hardcore-metal Venn diagram looks more like a single circle than ever before, at least in America, so perhaps we ought to come up with a term for anything that draws no influence from hardcore at all.

At the Mercy of Circumstance doesn’t exactly break new ground, but in the course of its brief runtime, it glorifies every front-line technique in modern hardcore, from brief, stringy guitar solos to feedback sequels fueled by pickups that sound as hot as the surface of the sun. It’s exactly what I want a record like this to be: nasty, brutish and short.

—Joseph Schafer

At the Mercy of Circumstance drops on July 23 on Glory Kid Limited. follow Trenchfoot on Facebook.