Outright launched pre-orders for Dedication 7"
'Sic Semper Tyrannis' by Territory available for free
Strength Approach - With Or Without You
New clip for the title track from the band's latest album, With or Without You.
Truth And Its Burden to tour Europe in August
04/08 DENMARK // Fredericia – Days Of Fury Fest
05/08 GERMANY // TBC
06/08 GERMANY // TBC
07/08 POLAND // Wegrow – In Decks Musiclub
08/08 POLAND // Bielsko Bala – Rude Boy Club
09/08 CZECH REPUBLIC // Jaromer – Brutal Assault Festival
11/08 BELGIUM // Ieper – Ieperfest
12/08 AUSTRIA // Haag – Böllerbaue (with A WILHELM SCREAM)
13/08 AUSTRIA // Gleisdorf – Kulturkeller (with DEATH BY STEREO, DEVIL IN ME)
14/08 AUSTRIA // Vienna – Aera (with DEATH BY STEREO, DEVIL IN ME)
15/08 CZECH REPUBLIC // Ostrava – Barrak Music Club
16/08 POLAND // Gdansk – Buffett
17/08 GERMANY // Berlin – Cometclub
18/08 GERMANY // Hohenstein-Ernstthal – Voice Of Art Festival
Strife joined 6131 Records. New album in the works!
South California’s legends Strife have signed with 6131 Records for the forthcoming release 'Witness Of Rebirth'. The album will be available on CD/LP/Digital. The labels said: “Some bands leave such an impression on fans that, even after two decades, their sound still resonates deep and wide. Southern California’s Strife are just such a band, having once again tapped into the energy that has kept listeners interested for 21 years. (…) As long-time fans, 6131 Records jumped at the chance to release Witness A Rebirth.“ Check out short preview of the album after the jump!
Listen 'Controlled' from the upcoming Hardside album
Back To Queens, new The Mob 7" is available
Download Ten Of Swords vs Lifeless split for free
Bitter Taste Of Life vs. 45 Stainless split is available
Lose The Life September tour details
27/9 Copenhagen, Denmark
28/9 Haarlem, Netherlands
29/9 Amsterdam, Netherlands
30/9 Karlskrona, Sweden
Ante Up - Prelude To Hell
Crowd Deterrent - Japan Tour 2012 Documentary
Watching recent Crowd Deterrent videos makes me think about how excited I was when I first heard Real Domain song by you know who. Everything about this style of hardcore is appealing. Crowd make some great tunes and have the ability to get their point across with great ease. They ain't taking no shit from anybody and play by their own rules. Musically, there’s always a hook to sing along with and easy-to-follow verses so I can just imagine the mayhem they cause during live shows. It's equally ignorant, provoking and violent, but they're also about staying true, respecting yourself and most of all, cheesy horror movies. This video is short documentary for band's Japan Tour 2012. Filmed by David Wilson. Produced by Downpour Creative and Crew Life. Get ignorant, bitches!
Get Wise - Clock's Ticking
Debut 7" called Clock's Ticking is out now! Ffo. Breakdown, Outburst and Warzone!
Human Demise - Of Wicked Men and Their Devices
There’s no radical departure from what they did on previous releases, but it is all presented in a more mature and condensed package. No-nonsense, every song hits hard. It’s hard to listen to this stuff without letting the adrenaline and aggressive urges go into effect. And don’t confuse it with that Holy Terror hype that has seem to be going on recently.
The album is filled with high points and its best when listened as a whole. With their stabs at Clevo-style Human Demise manages to hold their own and does not fall into any clichés. The raw and gritty hardcore that fills Of Wicked Men… from the start to finish matches quality of any other hyped album of 2012. Human Demise has made its mark with today’s hardcore audiences by making it sure listeners can always count on the band to deliver in terms of a quality.
WTF RECORDS
Cast Iron Jaw - Bound By Ignorance
A critical measure of how successful is an album of this kind is how much variety is in the tracks without drifting too far from the core sound. In other words, how well all the elements go together so the album can be enjoyable from start to finish without using any cheap tricks like shitty clean vocals or whack rapping parts. And we all know that some bands got no shame when it comes to mixing hardcore with this type of crap and the results are usually pathetic. In case of Cast Iron Jaw, the album isn’t void of missteps, but it delivers what you would expect from such record. The sound is hard, the songs are nicely put together and vocals sound like they wanna cause a serious damage to the listener.
While the production is not as beefy as it should, some of the parts here still sound heavy enough while others lack a bite. I also would also get rid of some of the unnecessary passages in the songs which doesn’t add anything and just make the songs sound less focused. Overall, while not as intense as Shattered Realm, whose influence can be heard in some of the slower parts of the album, Bound By Ignorance is well crafted and strong album. I hope for even better next one.
BadAss!! Records
Traveler - Nothing Lasts Long Enough
Listen to 'Life, By The Code' by Cleveland's Search Bloc
Listen to new songs from The Wrath!
Booze Riot releases '...Strikes Back!' EP
New releases from Set Me Free
Ralph Macchio - Forget The Past
The song is taken from Welcome To Your Doom album, out on Caustic Records
Elapse Interview
The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.!
The energy and dedication that burst out of every song at Storm, the recent EP by Sweden-owned Elapse, makes you think why this band is so criminally underrated. It’s a shame cause they got enough skills and ideas to make their hardcore both sharp and meaningful. The strong DIY ethic within the band makes them release all their stuff all by themselves and usually straight for free download.. That was the case with their previous album, The Mockracy, and that is also true for Storm. I got nothing but respect for the bands that handle their business and I would be glad if any of the kids reading this who have not heard Elapse, would go and check this band.Can you give some background on Elapse for those out there who are not familiar with the band? How and when it all started?
The members of Elapse are Love Thübeck on vocals, David Shanks on drums, Simon Flack and Robin Eriksson on guitars, and me, David Tapojärvi, on bass guitar. This band started around 2005 before I played with them. They played all sorts of metal with a lot of different influences, and in 2008 they found their way into hardcore and recorded a 3-track demo under the name of "40+ Bareback Hunterz". I joined them in late 2009 and in 2010 we became "Elapse". We recorded a demo/EP called "General Errors" and in 2011 we released "The Mockracy".
You have just put out a new EP called “Storm”. Can you tell us about that?
It's an EP containing five songs. It was recorded here in our home town Örebro a few months ago and we're just really happy that it's out!
My first thought was that the title might allude to Judge, but is there any other meaning to ‘Storm’?
The title was a bit longer at first. I had a title flying around in my head which was "Storm on a path", then Simon suggested to cut it down to just "Storm". It points to the feeling that nothing ever goes right. That your path, so to speak, is just doomed to fail. I guess it's a bit like the classic "rain cloud over head"-thing.
Is there any chance that ‘Storm’ will be released on any physical format?
"Storm" was actually just released physically. We made a CD version out of it ourselves and it turned out great. On our previous EP "The Mockracy" we had great artwork and all that, but we just slipped hand written CD-R's in to a plastic pocket, which worked okay, but this time we thought if would be fun to make something more "real" out of it. Now it looks like a proper CD release. We've also been talking about putting "Storm" on vinyl, but we're not sure what will happen there. It's also available for free download at a bunch of places, and will soon be on Spotify too.
Lyrically, these songs carry a rather negative tone. What is the main driving force behind your lyrics? What motivates you to write the way you do?
The songs on "Storm" are not necessarily based on concept, but I wrote a lot about things that I guess are in the same frame. It's about finding out what's good for you and what isn't. What you need in life and what you don't. About watching yourself from a different perspective. I would say "Worn Out" is a great example of perspective, where you find yourself looking back at stuff that has been tearing you down, but you've come out stronger and wiser than before. I just felt that I had to get that off my chest.
The motivation behind writing lyrics varies a lot. It can be anything from the society to a line in a movie, even though the song might not end up being about the thing that pushed my buttons in the first place.
The world seems to be in a shitty state these days. How do you feel about things like the financial crisis, unemployment, general instability in many people lives?
Obviously it's not a good thing at all and it's a shame what happens in this world. It's too bad there's more than one way people can feel about this.
Your country is seen as economically stable and generally friendly place to live. How does it all look like from the Swedish perspective?
I guess every country looks nice on a post card. I immediately think about a party called the Sweden Democrats. Their view on immigrants is not the friendliest and they've certainly helped the face of Sweden turn uglier.
What are some of the shows you have played that really stick out in your mind?
For me there are three shows that comes to mind, and I think that the rest of the band agrees. First, the release show for The Mockracy was just awesome, unfortunately David wasn't drumming on this show because of injured shoulders. We hadn't done that many shows before that one, but at this one it was fantastic to see that people had given some of their time to learn our songs.
A few months before that, we played a festival in Linköping called Fat Fest. It was the first time we played outside of Örebro, and there were really cool bands playing there, such as Trapped Under Ice, Bane and Hårda Tider.
The third one that comes to mind we did not that long ago in Gävle. We went there with two other bands from from our town (Chain Reaction and Hårda Bud) and it was amazing. It's a floor stage so they compensated with stools that they kicked around the floor to "stage dive" from.
What other bands out of Sweden you support these days?
There are several great bands from our town, such as Dead Reprise, Chain Reaction, Hårda Bud and Chastise. Then from all around Sweden we've got Lesra, Angers Curse, Bitter Taste of Life, Guilty, Lose the Life and Agent Attitude. This is just the tip of the iceberg, though.
After the EP is out, what’s next for Elapse?
To play as much as possible, basically. We've been hearing a lot of bands talk about this thing called "Euro tour", and it feels like we need to look into that.
New 'Last Man Standing' 7" by Watch Your Back
Truth In Needles - Against The Grain
Againt The Grain, new TIN's video off of the 2011 album "Turning Gray Black"
New Mercyless album out on Cruzade Records
Reaper signs Malfunction, Tolerate and Born Annoying
Face Your Enemy streams the entire album, 'Do The Right Thing'
Strength Records to drop limitied vinyl edition of Cause For Alarm album
Life After Death posted new tunes
Life After Death has posted a new song, Cursed and Cuffed. Band's Facebook: 'So since Lifeless NLFTW said they were going to post a song, we decided we would post a rough mix of one of our new songs called Cursed and Cuffed so you could have new jams from both of our bands.' The song is crazy, definitely a good follow up to their debut album, Scum Of Society Forever, which came out on Filled With Hate last year. "Cursed, Cursed, Cursed to rehearse this fuckin fake as smile/ Cuffed, Cuffed, Cuffed to a soul that never gave a fuck"
Lifeless to release new 7" on Harvcore
The new 7" Ep by New Jersey-based Lifeless is called 'If I Could Be Anyone But Me' and should be out this September via Harvcore Records. The band has put the new songs on their Stereokiller profile so go there and make sure you give this band a proper support they deserve. Ffo Merauder, Fury Of V, Bulldoze....
Menace - Demo 2012
Menace is from Williamsport, PA and comes with some vicious, negative and most of all tough as nails hardcore. I kind of ran across this band while just mindlessly browsing Internet and I wonder why there's no any hype yet about them cause this shit is so tight! From the music itself to the lyrics it constantly reminds me why I hate this world so much. I know these guys are working on some new tunes, but check out this demo in the meantime! Download!
Where Fear And Weapons Meet to play Bringin’ It Back For The Kids Fest
Where Fear And Weapons Meet has reunited and is set to play their first show at Bringin’ It Back For The Kids Fest on October 12th at Rocketown in Fort Lauderdale. As reported by several websites, the new line-up features two original members: John Wylie (Morning Again, Until The End) and Jason Lederman (Against All Authority, Shai Hulud). The band also consists of Larry Scott (Think Fast! co-owner), Chip Walbert (All Hell Breaks Loose, Until The End), and Chad Kishick (Shai Hulud). The band is working on some new tunes as well!
Bitter Thoughts - ST
Bitter Thoughts hails from Chicago suburbs and delivers powerful and slick hardcore/hardcore in vein of Dmize, Breakdown or 25 Ta Life. The got this good old NYHC vibe going on throughout this self titled demo and each tracks is delivered with force and a healthy dose of grit. Good stuff! Download!
Dead Man's Chest - Summon The Strength
New Dead Man's Chest video done by Frank Pellegrino. Seventh Dagger. Straight Edge. Hate.
No Cure - Broken Lives
No Cure is a new band from CT with ex members of Ambitions, iRise, Unforgiven, and The Risk Taken. It's a 4 song demo, just above 5 minutes long of fast and intensive hardcore with some thrash influences thrown in for a good measure. The sound quality is awesome, the songs are tight, can't wait to hear more from them! Download it!
New Blood: Life For A Life
Life For A Life are couple of dudes from Cali who are really pissed off at the world right now and did the best thing to do when you’re in such situation – started a hardcore band. Two demos released last year were promising, but when the band put out the Identity EP I knew this shit is serious. Tight as hell hardcore that delivers a perfect mix of groove and heaviness. This is interview I did with the singer, Jabril, just before the EP was released. Make sure you check Identity out after reading this interview!
Life For A Life are couple of dudes from Cali who are really pissed off at the world right now and did the best thing to do when you’re in such situation – started a hardcore band. Two demos released last year were promising, but when the band put out the Identity EP I knew this shit is serious. Tight as hell hardcore that delivers a perfect mix of groove and heaviness. This is interview I did with the singer, Jabril, just before the EP was released. Make sure you check Identity out after reading this interview!Tell us something about Life For A Life? Where do you come from ad how did the band originally get together?
Life For A Life is a Hardcore Punk band from Lancaster, Ca. We originally started as a 5 piece band in Jan. of 2010 with two vocalist. Christian Resendez and Jabril Ward singing, Dylan Frye playing bass, Brennen Mann on guitar, and Charlie Marotta playing the drums. Our current line-up is Jabril Ward singing, Cole Patterson on Bass, Brennen Mann on guitar, Charlie Marotta on drums, and recently we added another addition to the band, Rene Resendez who is Christian's older brother
Identity is brand new song from LFAL and it serves as a teaser for the upcoming EP. Wanna tell us something about it? How representative is this song to the rest of the material?
The single Identity was released in March of 2012 and is also the name of our EP set to be released in late May of 2012. The song on it's own is about walking forward into the unknown future. Without the knowledge of who you are, and what you stand for, the point of view on your own "identity" is altered. The past of someone does indeed define a man. The EP can be looked at as a story being told by a youthful mind. The EP "Identity" hopefully can be relatable to many listeners based off the fact that everyone does have the fear of the future. We can't wait for the EP to drop, and can't wait to hear feedback from fans.
There seem to be a lot of NYHC influences in your sound. What are some of the bands you draw your inspiration from?
The single Identity was released in March of 2012 and is also the name of our EP set to be released in late May of 2012. The song on it's own is about walking forward into the unknown future. Without the knowledge of who you are, and what you stand for, the point of view on your own "identity" is altered. The past of someone does indeed define a man. The EP can be looked at as a story being told by a youthful mind. The EP "Identity" hopefully can be relatable to many listeners based off the fact that everyone does have the fear of the future. We can't wait for the EP to drop, and can't wait to hear feedback from fans.
Do you think that the lyrics and the message in LFAL are of the same importance as the music?
We definitely do believe that the lyrics are as important as the music. Hardcore isn't just a sound, but it's a lifestyle. If you are able to preach your personally experiences with it, then your message will reach out to many kids.
I am kinda curious is there any deeper story behind the band’s name? It sounds quite serious.
Hahaha. The band name. This is a question we get a lot. The name LIFE FOR A LIFE started out as a phrase that we use to use in high school. Our vocalist Jabril is an only child and values friendship very much. He wanted the security of friendship, as well as giving out the same security. We all made a pact to stick together no matter what, and we would throw the phrase around once up against the wall. It eventually turned into the band's name, and it became known very quickly in our town.
You guys played with plenty of well established bands, from Donnybrook to Madball to Trapped Under Ice. Is there a lot of pressure opening for bands like these and how supportive are kids to up and coming bands like yours?
Opening up for major bands such as Madball and Trapped Under Ice is indeed very nerve wrecking, but pressure is everywhere in life. Sometimes you have to just brush off the thoughts of self-doubt and give it your all. We believe that you only get one chance to shine, and that chance is now. Usually the kids in our home town scene and local areas are very supportive. Sometimes it feels like the pressure slowly leans off of us the more we play shows. We start to see familiar faces each time, and it starts to feel like home wherever we are.
What bands would you like to play with in the future?
Even though we are susceptible to play with any band no matter the genre or location. We could all agree that playing a show with Terror would be a great pleasure. Just the energy that they bring to every show they play is so exciting. Who wouldn't want to be a part of that.
If you knew someone just getting into hardcore, what advice would you give them about the whole thing? What bands, records, labels, zines they should check out?
Advice that we would give to anyone new getting into hardcore is that the best thing to do is let down your guard, open your eyes, relax, and get ready to be understood by a wave of people from different places, different past, different futures, but all the same shoes.
What are your favorite current hardcore bands?
Record labels to check out would be 6131 records here in California, Reaper Records in New York, and some smaller labels such as Life to Live in Florida & Learn to Trust in Malaysia. Currently some of our favorite Hardcore bands would be Fire & Ice, Backtrack, Rotting Out, Downpresser and many more. Bands that should be checked out would have to be Down Fall from down here in Lancaster, Always Try from down here in Lancaster, Relations from Oxnard, The Black Path from Lake Elsinore, Iron Grip from Denver, and Losin' It from Florida.
What are your hopes and dreams for the future of the band?
We hope to show fans that no matter their thoughts, that they are never alone in life. We also want to spread Hardcore music and the lifestyle as far out as possible to different people no matter their ethnicity, faith, and point of views.
Check out band's Bandcamp
Stoop Kid - Demo
Hard as nails hardcore out of Massachusetts, Stoop Kid delivers everything you need to start wanting fuck people up real badly. This is their first demo and it sounds tight. Pounding and crushing stuff delivered mostly in mid-tempos with the emphasis on groove and nice double bass work. The angry-ass vocals make you want to get your aggression out in a brutal way. Pretty sick. Spineless is my fav song, but all of them are solid. Download it!
