AM Radio: August 2023

The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.

It’s been a particularly active year for great new music, and I still feel like I’m catching up here. This month’s adds to AM Radio total up to another 20 new songs, mostly from July and August, and there’s a pretty diverse mix of styles in this drop. Also, just in case you’re keeping track, I rearranged the orientation of the playlists on Spotify and Apple to reflect a reverse-chronological order; from now on, the newest songs go first.

Before getting to a few highlights, though, I also felt this was worth saying out loud: AM Radio is not a running list of every new release. This is a running list of songs that I have personally handpicked to share, and if they’re showing up here, it’s because I’ve been able to spend enough time with them to want to share them.

In other words, this is what I am legitimately listening to and enjoying right now. If you’re curious about what the future of Anti-Matter sounds like, start here.

FOLLOW & LISTEN TO AM RADIO: Spotify | Apple Music

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PHANTOM BAY “Airtight” (KROD, August 2023)

Their 2022 self-titled album was perfectly good, but the three singles that Phantom Bay have released this year—including “Airtight,” their latest—stand with some of my favorite music so far in 2023. Punchy and discordant hardcore, as if Unwound picked up the tempo and pummeled you for two minutes. This song is just eminently listenable.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

PAIN OF TRUTH “You and Me” (featuring Freddy Madball) (DAZE, August 2023)

I’m from New York City. I grew up going to Breakdown and Raw Deal shows, and I have always been here for any song that makes me want to throw my chair out the window. “You and Me” is precisely that—a straightforward blast of classic hardcore fury and run-this-shit energy that bypasses intellect and goes straight for instinct. I can always get a new chair.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

INTO IT. OVER IT. “New Addictions” (Storm Chasers LTD, August 2023)

Evan Weiss was crammed into the discourse about the so-called “emo revival” of the early 2010s, but Into It. Over It. was always a more textured project that leaned a little more into hardcore grit than their pop-punk-derived contemporaries. “New Addictions” charts a path that goes past post-hardcore and into the terrain of dark beauty. For real, it’s fucking mesmerizing.

BUY IT: Bandcamp

MOVE BHC “Double Death” (featuring Aaron Heard) (Triple B, August 2023)

Boston’s Move BHC has been bubbling under for a while now, but with their debut album, Black Radical Love, it’s clear that the band have really honed a cohesive blend of music and messaging fit for a liberation movement. “Double Death” opens the album with a brutal take on police violence that culminates with a guttural verse from Jesus Piece’s Aaron Heard. In less than two minutes, you’ll know exactly what you’re in for.

BUY IT: Bandcamp | Vinyl

CEILINGS “Big Missile” (Community Sunday, July 2023)

I had this idea for a feature once that I’d call something like “Not Much Better Than a Thousand,” where I’d only feature songs with roughly 1,000 streams or less on Spotify. Once I realized how impossible it was to search for songs that weren’t racking up the big numbers, however, I folded. Somehow last month I came across this new single from the Winnipeg-based Ceilings and “Big Missile” is exactly the kind of song a feature like that would have been made for. Densely layered vocals and guitars float over a hard groove not unlike Drug Church’s more melodic impulses, followed by something that—had I written it—I might even call a mosh part. For my money, it’s got everything. Let’s give it a thousand.

ONLINE: Bandcamp | Instagram

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