AM Radio: January 2024
The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.
If the end of last year went out in a drought, the first month of 2024 came in with a downpour of new music that moves through classic hardcore (Salt, Bite The Hand, Ignite), tight and metallic grooves (Domain featuring Scarab, Rot Away), and a satisfying range of post-hardcore variety (Ways Away, Militarie Gun, Pile of Love). All in, fifteen new tracks make the cut.
Also new: An amazing reader has offered to keep a YouTube Music playlist running for AM Radio, so if that’s your preferred platform, check the link is below and hit “Save to Library.” I was a little scrambled while leaving for tour this week—no thanks to the thieves who stole one of my guitars out of storage—so I wasn’t able to get this updated sooner, but the latest adds will appear on YouTube Music shortly.
As always, AM Radio is not a running list of every new release, but a running list of select songs that I have personally handpicked to share. This is what I’m actually listening to; no one else influences what gets added. Below are a few standouts.
FOLLOW & LISTEN TO AM RADIO: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music
MODERN LIFE IS WAR “End Times Dub - Urian Hackney at the Controls” (Deathwish Inc.)
Modern Life is War put out a trio of singles under the Tribulation Worksongs banner between 2018 and 2021. This month Deathwish compiles them for a cohesive (and excellent) mini-LP that also features this unreleased dub mix of standout track “Feels Like End Times.” It’s a wild and spacious revision, throbbing with distortion and despair.
UNSUFFERABLE “Revisionist” (Iodine)
108 just wrapped up their first shows in several years, but Rob Fish wastes no time in moving forward with this new project. Unsufferable lives on 108’s roughest edges, recalling a version of hardcore that thrives on impulse and abrasion. “Revisionist” captures it best for me, revealing its depth over multiple listens.
GHOST WORK “Godspeed On The Trail” (Spartan)
Seaweed sort of snuck in the back door when it comes to their profound influence on ‘90s post-hardcore, finding themselves on tour with many of the major players and even drafting Alan Cage from Quicksand on drums for a spell. Aaron Stauffer is still one of the great voices of the era and Ghost Work—also featuring members of Snapcase, Milemarker, and Minus the Bear—deliver on the strength of their descent.
COSMIC JOKE “Leave It Alone” (HardLore / Triple B)
It must be a little intimidating to be the band that HardLore literally decided to launch a record label over, but LA’s Cosmic Joke are strong enough to carry that weight. “Leave it Alone” is an emblematic choice to get their feel, packing melodic punk energy with frantic hardcore brevity.
CHOPPING BLOCK “67” (Self-Released)
Northwest hardcore is having a moment, and Chopping Block are doing it the way I like it: Fast, agitated, and free of many bells and whistles. Sometimes I just want my hardcore to get in and get out and leave me slack-jawed in 90 seconds—the successful execution of which is surely a fucking art.
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More hardcore in dub, please. My ears want more of that.
I love the "am radio" component to anti-matter. I always look forward to discovering new music which i find is the one of the greatest pleasures of listening to music. But some reason every time I read the word "radio" am reminded of something the German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen once said, about the radio in an interview with the wire magazine back in June 1999. He was having a flashback on a childhood memory of his mother. (I think this was around 1931 or 1932) "My mother would then talk to the speaker of the radio and when she didn't get an answer she became very furious. She couldn't understand that this was a one way box, a one way message and that she had no chance to talk to the voice. I have never forgotten that. I think she was right that the radio from the start is an invention which is incomplete and if someone talks to me I should have a chance to talk back." O what would Marconi think?