End of a Year 2024: Albums and EPs pt 1
SPEED COURTESY OF JOHNATHAN TUMBEL
2024 seemed like a weird transitional year for hardcore. None of the big room bands made good on their ambition to write the next Glow On and subsequently receive free Taco Bell for life. People seemed to get bored with click-kick beatdown. They also realized the “OSDM revival” had basically turned into click-kick beatdown and got bored with that too. The “fastball pitch” heavy shit lost some velocity. Gel and Spy lost the plot entirely. Nobody dropped the type of album that made them a fest must-have for the 2025 season.
Instead, beatdown got weirder. People started calling things “edge metal” because “metalcore” just wasn’t cutting it. Every town on the continent had sixteen new demos from bands who covered “Get Lost” by Stop and Think at their first show and may or may not have broken up a week later. From a recorded standpoint, hardcore never had that ubiquitous “moment” everyone could point to and say “this is what 2024 was all about”.
Instead we got a glut of solid demos and first EPs from bands on the cutting edge of either the next big thing or memory-holed obscurity. That’s more exciting, if you ask me. Besides, this list is almost entirely hardcore. It was gonna be all hardcore but I gave the Blood Incantation record one more spin and couldn’t leave it out in good conscience. There was no dip in quality this year, even if nothing left a crater-sized impact on the scene at large.
Here’s my top 27 releases of 2024. Sorry for the weird number. I forgot two records that felt mandatory to include and couldn’t decide what to take off. Besides, this exercise is just as important for my own curatorial purposes as anything else. With that in mind, if 2029 Vince is reading this, make sure to include Fugitive Wizard’s Obscuri Æturnum on your end of decade roundup.
Stay tuned for part 2.
27: Blood Incantation - Absolute Elsewhere (Century Media)
These death metal vets fuse their progressive sound with 1970’s nerd rock to create a supremely listenable tech death record.
Listen to “The Stargate [Tablet 1]
26: Life’s Question - Life’s Question (Flatspot)
This is the definition of new school, big room “going for it” hardcore. I even bitched about it for a whole article. In the end, though, these tracks are catchy, fun and creative.
Listen to “Brass Coffin”
25: Klobber - Klobber ‘24 (Self-Released)
Tongue-in-cheek beatdown with classic New York vibes and live-off-the-floor energy. About ten records could have made the cut for these last three spots. I went for the one with the personal connection that I’ll remember best in five years.
Listen to “UN4GIVEN”
24: No Time - Suffer No Fool (TKO)
Versatile, top-shelf oi-core that pulls in everything from classic rock to early 80’s USHC. These Pittsburgh vets may suffer from the opposite of recency bias here, because this is a strong record.
Listen to “True Hate”
23: Speed - Only One Mode (Flatspot)
From a cultural perspective, Speed arguably dropped hardcore’s “record of the year”. These Aussies aren’t beating the “TUI worship” allegations anytime soon, but they land distinctly in the modern zeitgeist (and on their own feet) thanks to a heavy dose of goon groove.
Listen to “Don’t Need”
22: Utility - Demo (Fortress)
In a year defined by good demos, this one stood out by keeping things short, fast and catchy. Utility’s debut flies by in under five minutes without an ounce of fat. I put it on when I started this three sentence blurb and it finished before I did.
Listen to “No One to Blame”
21: Wreckage - Self in All (Scheme)
Wreckage are torchbearers of the current demo wave, inspiring a glut of bands to jock not only them but the stuff they pull from. Release three isn’t a major stylistic shift, it just tightens the screws a bit. I feel like this band’s best material is in front of them, but their catalog is already impressive on its own merits. Self in All makes a strong case for being their best work.
SPLITKNUCKLE COURTESY OF DECLAN BRECKON
20: No Idols - Demo (Designated Mosher’s Unit)
DC hardcore is starting to make a comeback (although real heads will probably argue it never left). No Idols stick to local tradition, mining Mosher’s Delight, the Sorry State/No Way scene, 86 Mentality and probably some other stuff that’s too esoteric for my outsider brain. This demo proves that the best way to make hardcore stand out is by writing some fuckin’ hooks.
Listen to “Spineless”
19: Fatal Realm - Demo (Self Released)
And now for something completely different — hookless, artless music made by guys who’ve been to more All Out War shows than they can count. Fatal Realm’s demo may simultaneously be the nail in the coffin for hardcore kids playing OSDM and the best example of it in a modern context. This is real deal death metal riffing, with creative songs and perfectly raw production. I don’t know how you could hear this and ever listen to a band with a name like “187 Vomit Visionz” again.
Listen to “Hammer of Heresy”
18: Armor - Afraid of What’s to Come (11PM)
The Dynastic Yellow Star movement may have been handcuffed by the pandemic, but this release proves those bands weren’t simply selling lighting in a bottle. Nobody wants to hear about punk bands “maturing”, so I’ll just say Armor’s new 12” EP feels like a smarter, more intentional version of the sound they may have stumbled into on their earlier material. Does that mean some of the unpolished charm is gone? Admittedly, yeah. Oh well. I think this stuff is a lot better, although history may not be on my side.
Listen to “Freedom”
17: Splitknuckle - Breathing Through the Wound (Northern Unrest/DAZE)
While bands like Balmora and Contention bring tight-chug metalcore to the masses through a strict revivalist lens, Splitknuckle arrive there from a UK funhouse perspective that proves what those aforementioned bands are doing could be just as vital with a modern bent. These songs are schizophrenic and sometimes comically overlong, yet for a two week period in March, this record had me in a trance where I couldn’t stop reaching for track one as soon as the last song finished.
Listen to “Essex Kingz”
16: Discontent - Fifteen Souls (Streets of Hate)
After a few years as the de facto entry point for deathcore kids, some beatdown aficionados are pulling their genre back to its roots as small club, low budget outsider music for the least well-adjusted among us. Everyone knows how the uber-influential Castle Heights scene drew from New York death metal acts like Suffocation and Internal Bleeding. Discontent reminds us that Killing Time and Sick of it All were just as influential on golden era beatdown. This EP is drop-tuned, slammy, and features the most absurd snare tone I’ve ever heard. Structurally, though, these are just good hardcore songs.
POISION RUIN
15: Poison Ruin - Confrere (Relapse)
Philadelphia’s Poison Ruin has quietly churned out a deep and impressive discography in relatively short time. Confrere, their fifth release in as many years, might be their most visceral and unapproachable effort. It feels more grim and less triumphant than what’s come before. Still, this band has a template and they know it works. Poison Ruin are yet to put out a bad song. This record’s opener/title track ranks among their best, which is no small feat considering one could argue Poison Ruin is the greatest punk band of the 2020s.
Listen to “Confrere”
14: Trail of Lies - Only the Strong (Triple B)
If you asked me about TOL last year, I’d say they were a pandemic casualty. Syracuse’s one-time heirs apparent seemingly disappeared after falling off their initial hype train and then being grounded during lockdowns. I wasn’t expecting them to release anything ever again, let alone one of 2024’s best full-lengths. Every generation of hardcore kid needs an answer to the question “what if Jamey Jasta wrote Destroy the Machines”. The infrastructure was in place for Trail of Lies, with their hypnotic grooves, crushing guitar tones and legendary merch, to climb the throne and fill that spot. This album was good enough to put them there, but with the band’s limited touring capacity, it’s hard to gauge where they actually stand. Regardless, those who connected with the record did so on an atomic level.
Listen to “Unbroken”
13: Speed Plans - DUI (Convulse)
This late November release may have cracked my top ten if I had even just one more month to digest it. The dudes in Speed Plans are surely going to lose sleep over that fact. Sorry guys. Usually when punk gets this ignorant, it’s done with an air of snark, sarcasm or sardonic smarm. Speed Plans give it to us deadpan, which makes me wonder what the singer walks around thinking about all day. These seven songs are bonafide earworms, delivered sharply with perfect punk production and appropriately tight playing. I’m gonna say it: DUI is Concealed Blade-level Pittsburgh hardcore. That means anyone who considers themselves hardcore would be wise to check it out.
Listen to “Lifestyle”
12: Freeze Out - Demo (Tribe Dream)
It’s been a while since I’ve heard a good Age of Quarrel rip that resisted the temptation to dabble in a little Best Wishes-style thrash riffing. Many tried, few succeeded. From my approximation, this Houston band nails it because they’ve got as much or more reverence for what initially inspired the Cro Mags, like Discharge and Bad Brains, than for the burly, metal influenced stuff left directly in their wake. You can’t go backwards from Brightside and land directly on AOQ. There’s too much chugging, soloing and gruff barking. Just like Harley Flanagan, you gotta start with punk and ease your way into the metallic brain-rot. The Freeze Out demo sounds like shit, has wild, high-pitched vocals and tends to hit the accelerator where other NYHC revivalists might be inclined to pump the breaks. It’s expertly done.
Listen to “Face-Off”
11: Dimension Six - Remain (From Within)
2024 was the year everyone and their mother covered “Invasion” by Righteous Jams. With the classic Lockin’ Out well running dry for inspiration, the next logical step is to mine the era immediately following it, where bands took the bouncy New York demo sound and cranked up the heaviness. With Kids Like Us and The Mongoloids slated for back to back reunion sets at FYA ‘25, it’s almost a foregone conclusion that some enterprising young minds will start digging through the 2006-2010 era of capital H hardcore and see what they like. If that happens, Dimension Six are one step ahead. I doubt they planned it. I think these Virginians just love their home-state heroes Bracewar, Naysayer and Down to Nothing. They could have honestly just cut the shit and called this EP No Remorse II: Electric Boogaloo. I’d have no qualms. That’s a standout release of its era and D6 do a flattering homage.
Part 2 coming very soon!