AM Radio: April 2024
The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.
There are thirteen new adds to AM Radio this month, and I’m kind of delighted by how many newer bands are sitting so comfortably next to some more established favorites. Anti-Matter alum like Life’s Question and Spiritual Cramp have new music out this month, as do One Step Closer (who are coming soon to the interview hot seat) and Umbra Vitae—which features Jacob Bannon from Converge and Sean Martin from Twitching Tongues, and previously, Hatebreed. But don’t sleep on some of the lesser known names like Long Island’s Heavyhex, whose excellent Bridge Nine debut is out next week, and Ohio’s Minuet, whose melodically abrasive brand of hardcore shows definite promise.
As always, I make it a point to reiterate that AM Radio is not a running list of every new release, but a playlist of personally handpicked songs. This is what I am actually listening to right now, with no outside influence or interference—and that’s a promise. A round-up of some of this month’s standout tracks follows below.
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STATE POWER “Gates of Hell” (White Russian)
“Gates of Hell” is State Power’s first and only song right now, and it’s so compelling that I’m finding it hard to imagine a follow-up. This is a simply relentless piece of music, just one pummeling section after another, that still somehow manages to find a few melodic flourishes; the vocal alone is a masterclass in seething. It’s perfectly economic, too: Nothing superfluous, everything necessary.
BUY IT: Bandcamp
GEL “Mirage” (Blue Grape Music)
New Jersey’s GEL have been on tour for the entire year since the release of their breakthrough album, Only Constant, and it shows. “Mirage” is the first taste of their forthcoming Persona EP, and it’s a brilliant example of refinement as a growth strategy: They go sharper, more deliberate, and surprisingly detail-oriented for a three-minute classic hardcore beater. In terms of what I want from a 21st century hardcore song, this is it.
BUY IT: Bandcamp
STARS HOLLOW “Sickening” (Acrobat Unstable)
With “Sickening,” Stars Hollow takes me back to that glorious mid-’90s moment when “emo” was still hardcore and everyone still kind of liked big breakdowns and you could still cram all of those things into a single minute-and-a-half song without (much) judgment. Of course, doing that well is a difficult wall to climb. But this song scales the height with confident execution.
NO RIGHT “‘Til It Hurts” (Self-Released)
“‘Til It Hurts” is a great example of what you can do with straight-edge lyrics: No Right goes beyond the apocalyptic scared-straight tropes and moves inward instead, tracing a personal narrative that at least tries to wrestle with the more human feelings from shame, trauma, and addiction’s other related ghosts. But don’t get it twisted: “‘Til It Hurts” also ends with a pretty sick mosh part and a suitably genre-specific lyrical coda—“Straight-edge! The true reality!”—making sure that it thoroughly hits all the notes.
BUY IT: Bandcamp
KNOCKED LOOSE “Don’t Reach For Me” (Pure Noise)
There’s a part on the new Knocked Loose single—which is so far my favorite of the three new songs they’ve released—where Bryan Garris screams, “I never gave a fuck!” and let me tell you: It has the ability to make me stop what I’m doing every single time I hear it. The first comment for this song on YouTube says, “Every new Knocked Loose song is the single angriest thing I've ever heard since the last Knocked Loose song,” and that is both hilarious and quite thankfully true.
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I will definitely listen to this. I don’t believe in music stagnation. I notice once people reach a certain age (25 usually) “open earness” disappears. And they will listen to the same music for the rest of their lives. It is baffling. I guess the human brain is the most complex thing on this planet.
Great batch, as always. But fuck, that State Power song is on heavy rotation for me now.