hardcore punk

by Cosmo Lee Skins used to be animal parts or touch football teams. Now all sorts of software and hardware sport skins. Trustkill Records is selling band-branded skins via MusicSkins, the tech toy equivalent of CafePress. Via 3M vinyl, it’ll slap your designs on iPhones, Sidekicks, Blackberries, and so on. Especially cool are the laptop […]

Spreading the disease There are few joys like horse-whipping, double-time, metallic hardcore. When I worked out yesterday, I put on Ringworm‘s Justice Replaced by Revenge (Victory, 2005). I felt like He-Man. Today the band begins a European tour – see dates below, including several US shows afterwards. Recently I dug up an email interview I […]

by Cosmo Lee Who buys 7″s now? Punks and purists, perhaps. I’ve never been a 7″ guy myself – I prefer albums – but I appreciate its romance. It’s more punk than metal; you see kids at hardcore shows clutching little square sleeves bought with lunch money. At their best, 7″s aren’t junk food, but […]

by Cosmo Lee Jason Schmidt of Graf Orlock, evidently, is Justin Smith of Ghostlimb. Graf Orlock is an Invisible Oranges favorite; I wrote about their last record here, and the cat named after them here. There’s a bit of a “ha ha” factor surrounding Graf Orlock’s grindcore filled with ’80s action movie samples. But Ghostlimb […]

Foto by xBORZAKx Not to spam you with tour dates – but good bands on the road deserve support. 99% of bands don’t mean anything to me. I might enjoy their music, but it doesn’t reach deeper than my ears. Blacklisted fall in the other 1%. …The Beat Goes On (Deathwish, 2005) helped me through […]

Not your mom This month, NYC’s Wetnurse bring their dairy-free brand of prog/hardcore/metal/weirdness to much of the US East Coast, with a few stops in the Midwest – dates are below. They’re supporting their new record Invisible City, out now on Seventh Rule. Along for much of the ride are Black Market Activities band Khann, […]

by Cosmo Lee The voice of Botch is back. Dave Verellen’s fearsome throat graces the debut 7″ from Narrows, a supergroup whose resumes include These Arms Are Snakes, Unbroken, Some Girls, and many more. “Life Vests Float, Kids Don’t,” a driving two-step, is just the tip of the iceberg. The other two tracks downshift into […]

by Cosmo Lee Back in the day, this would have been a cassette tape. You would have played it until it wore out. Dubbed copies for your friends. Carried it around in a Walkman like a Bible. Now, in an age where “mixtapes” are CD’s and MP3’s, it’s not quite the same. But Pig Destroyer’s […]

by Cosmo Lee What a difference a name makes! Apiary were a technical metalcore outfit that put out one record of faceless Dillinger Escape Plan worship. After various lineup changes and touring-related adversities, they re-assessed themselves. They found they had no original members left; perhaps they also discovered their sound was obsolete. So they renamed […]

by Cosmo Lee The record I’ve listened to most this month is Killing the Dream‘s Fractures (Deathwish Inc., 2008). It’s melodic hardcore punk in the vein of, say, Comeback Kid or With Honor. This sound doesn’t usually grab me, but the execution is so sincere and skillful that I can’t help but give in. Now, […]