AM Radio: May 2024
The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.
It’s the last edition of AM Radio before summer kicks in and this month’s new adds close the loop on anticipated album releases from One Step Closer, Heavyhex, Hot Water Music, and The Hope Conspiracy (whose album technically comes out tomorrow), and open the curtain for newer bands like Terminator, False Sense, and Original Sharks, among others. Thirteen new songs in all make the cut.
For the uninitiated: AM Radio is not a running list of every new release, but a playlist of personally handpicked songs that reflects only those songs that personally excite me—with no outside influence or interference ever. That’s a promise. Another batch of standout tracks from this update follows below.
FOLLOW & LISTEN TO AM RADIO: Spotify | Apple Music | YouTube Music
SPEED “Real Life Love” (Flatspot / Last Ride)
At this point, Speed have perfected their message: Despite the “Gang Called Speed” aesthetic being hard as nails, the lyrics to Only One Mode—their excellent debut album, coming July 12—feature the word “love” at least ten times across ten songs by my count. That its first single is called “Real Life Love” is no surprise, then: Speed is literally telling you who they are with every mention of it.
STAND STILL “In My Blood” (DAZE)
“In My Blood” is an earnest and endearing song that digs deep into a kind of storytelling that you don’t ever really hear that much these days—and especially not in a song with a mosh part this good. We all have our hardcore origin stories, of course, and putting them into song is our birthright.
BE WELL “A Tap I Can’t Turn Off” (Equal Vision)
Returning with a one-off two-song single, Be Well continue to mine the well of interiority, and on “A Tap I Can’t Turn Off,” singer Brian McTernan situates himself in the fear of disappointing the people who love him most. The video features his real-life daughter, which only makes the lyrics feel all the more resonant.
FOREIGN HANDS “Horror Domain” (Sharptone)
If you believe everything you read on the internet, the latest single from Foreign Hands is practically a tribute to Poison The Well’s You Come Before You. And OK, I hear that. But let’s not deflect: The way “Horror Domain” violently steers itself between melody and cacophony is uniquely satisfying.
BUY IT: Vinyl
STATE FAULTS “Palo Santo” (Deathwish)
You never know what you’re going to get when a band gets called “post-hardcore” these days, but “Palo Santo” has all the earmarks of the sub-genre as I know it. Still, it’s the way this song gets feral—in that hard-to-describe way that some of my favorite Gravity Records from the ‘90s get feral—that compels me to hit that replay button.
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What I like about radio and especially listening in general is that compared to reading in some ways it can be much more enlightening. When you read you can “read ahead” (skipped certain parts read what you want to read) but when you listen to something you can’t “listen ahead”.
YouTube playlist fully updated!