Get ready for the Think I Care revival
The relatively unheralded MA band seems to be picking up steam
Massachusetts veterans Think I Care have received a bit of spotlight recently. They reunited at the annual “For The Children” benefit show in Cambridge, MA last December, and today, Triple B Records announced they would be repressing and giving the streaming treatment to two of the band’s iconic releases from the early 2000s.
I’ve personally never dug deep on TIC’s discography. Their best material hasn’t been super accessible in the streaming era. They were quite prolific, releasing two full-lengths and four EPs across a six year period. That said, the only music they currently have on streaming is their 2006 Bridge Nine Records full length World Asylum and a collection of EPs (which doesn’t include their consensus best release Mongrel for some reason).
That lack of accessibility hasn’t stopped TIC from influencing a couple key contemporary acts. Philadelphia’s Worn are obvious disciples — they put out a well-received record on Triple B a few years back. More recently, Milwaukee’s World I Hate released Years of Lead in 2023, taking the fast-into-hard formula of TIC’s early stuff and putting it in a palatable modern package, with listenable production and a metallic shimmer.
Combine the reverence from cool contemporary bands with a high-profile reunion show, and people are really starting to take notice. More new bands are pulling influence from TIC, including one I’m in with some homies. This Triple B reissue is gonna be a big look too. I wonder if there was any calculated decision-making behind repressing those records, or if the stars just aligned at the right time.
Either way, get ready to hear more about TIC than you ever expected to. They’re a perfect fit for the modern mainstream hardcore zeitgeist. They started in 2000 as a really sloppy fastcore band, but by Mongrel (2004) they’d gotten way more mid-tempo and mosh-oriented.
20 years later, hardcore’s in a space where kids who came in the door through Sunami are discovering a burgeoning wave of early 2000’s-indebted “demo-core”. Think I Care is the perfect old-head band for these kids to latch onto. They have punk credibility due to their speed and amateurish charm, but they also wrote spin-kick breakdowns and chug parts. Unlike a lot of the concurrent Lockin’ Out/Youngblood Records stuff — which never gets heavier than a chunky two-step — you can actually dance to TIC in the way modern kids are used to.
As anyone who’s ever played fast hardcore in a room filled with Pain of Truth fans can attest, having those big, obvious mosh parts is necessary to win kids over these days. I’m just hoping the inevitable wave of TIC imitators remember to throw some fast parts in too, for the sake of dynamic variety. A lot of people forget that hardcore is supposed to be fast these days, but I won’t get on my old man perch about it right now. Instead I’m gonna check out these Think I Care records that I’ve been sleeping on.