Editor’s Note: This article was originally published in 2022 and lightly updated in 2025 to reflect Turnstile’s new album release and their four GRAMMY nominations to date, as well as the ongoing influence of Turnstile and Code Orange on the hardcore scene.
When it comes to hardcore's intersection with the mainstream, it's hard to remember a stretch quite like this.
Turnstile — the high-flying, shamelessly hooky, stylistically rangey Baltimore punks — have only strengthened their momentum over the past three years. After earning three nominations at the 2023 GRAMMYs for tracks from their 2021 breakout album GLOW ON, they returned with another nomination at the 2024 GRAMMYs for Best Remixed Recording ("Alien Love Call"). Now, with a brand-new album, NEVER ENOUGH, just released, Turnstile have firmly solidified their evolution from cramped vans and vet halls to one of the most recognized voices in rock.
Code Orange, who came up as authentically punk as anyone, continue to push hardcore boundaries. After scooping up two GRAMMY nominations for Best Metal Performance early in their career and touring with Korn, they've maintained their reputation for innovation, even as fans eagerly await what's next from the Pittsburgh heavyweights.
But with all this mainstream attention can arise reductive thinking: that Turnstile and Code Orange somehow stand alone as the sole ambassadors of the hardcore scene. It diminishes the larger community, and its matrix of creative interchanges, that are responsible for these breakout acts' very existences.
For those unfamiliar with hardcore: think the original punk-rock sound of ‘76 or so, with the tempos and intensity cranked to the nth degree. Acts like Minor Threat, Black Flag and Circle Jerks were its early pillars; forward-thinking stylists like Bad Brains expanded its boundaries.
In the ensuingdecades, hardcore spawned innumerable subsets, like powerviolence, beatdown, youthcrew, and D-beat. It also engendered a network of communities that can act both as nurturing subcultures, and philosophically and creatively arid spaces.
But a cursory look at the contemporary hardcore scene reveals that what was once a rigid, defensive, hyper-masculine subculture — think basketball shorts, beatdowns in the pit and message-board flame wars — is changing rapidly.
Today, hardcore and hardcore-adjacent bands are full of women and people of all racial backgrounds; all gender expressions and walks of life are welcome to rock or just watch. Traditional orthodoxies are crumbling as a slew of fresh acts rewrite what hardcore can be — and sound like.
The ideological purism is becoming more porous; musically, bands are bringing in elements from big-tent indie, synth-rock and 2000s radio hits. Big melodies and big choruses are in. The songs are funny, intelligent and thought-provoking. Hearts are often on sleeves.
Turnstile and Code Orange demonstrate how hardcore has expanded and continues to flourish as an art form for everybody, not just an unbending few.
And if you love either of those bands, maybe you'll love these too.
Scowl
Kat Moss' route to punk as personal salvation was like that of innumerable young outcasts in her position: she needed a counterweight to stifling, conservative suburbia. (In her case, the Gold Rush waystop town of Rocklin, California — a half-hour drive from Sacramento.)
"Sacramento was like hick-town suburbia, and I was around people who didn't think like me and didn't get me," she told Revolver. "I felt very alone. I'd dye my hair and play my music loud when I'd drive through the neighborhoods. I just felt so 'f— you' about everything."
Once she met her future bandmates in Scowl — guitarist Malachi Greene, bassist Bailey Lupo and drummer Cole Gilbert — she found an outlet for that displaced rage and alienation: a bracing scream that slices you up, backed by thunderous hardcore.
Still, she approached this mode of self-expression on her own terms, embracing a subversion of stereotypical femininity as a visual aesthetic, from onstage bouquets to floral dresses and album art.
Musically, the Santa Cruz-based Scowl were combustible from their earliest demo, released back in 2019. But their 2021 debut LP, How Flowers Grow, is where their artistry took, er, bloom: where their earliest work was an invitation to a knife fight, Scowl now sounds like they're compelling you to dig your own grave.
But the heaviest, most uncompromising moments (like the eponymous closer — good heavens!) truly land because of the moments of levity. Case in point: "Seeds to Sow," where Moss switches to clean singing over percolating, sax-inflected pop.)
All of this together has made Scowl fans out of Post Malone and Fred Durst; the latter picked them as support for Limp Bizkit.
Soul Blind
If you're looking for a list of carbon copies of Minor Threat and the like, look elsewhere. Because hook-filled, genre-blurring, slickly-produced bands like Soul Blind are bellwethers as to where the music at large is going.
In this case, the blend is of hardcore-adjacency with post-grunge and post-hardcore — imbued with a mesmeric twist of shoegaze like Swervedriver and Hum.
Hailing from New York's Hudson Valley, mononymous bassist/vocalist Cen, guitarists Finn Lovell and Justin Sarica earned their bona fides — their last strictly hardcore project being God of Wine.
When they added Juan Espinosa (later replaced by Steve Hurley) to the mix, they headed in a much more melodic and radio-friendly direction, without sacrificing an iota of intensity.
"Bands like Failure, Hum, Sunny Day Real Estate, My Bloody Valentine, and Deftones all influence our sound," Cen explained to No Echo. "We wanted to make music that captured the sound of our youth while adding our own modern touch to it."
Soul Blind released their latest LP, Feel it All Around, this fall — and it uncannily sounds like 2002 and 2022. Mainstream emo rubs against visceral post-hardcore; songs like "Seventh Hell," "Stuck in a Loop" and "System (Failing)" simultaneously bruise and uplift.
Drug Church
A comic book writer and podcaster when not "singing" in Self Defense Family and Drug Church, Patrick Kindlon is one of the most irascible and compelling voices in alternative music.
Whether he's articulating his individual-over-collective philosophy on the page, ranting about the confused state of comics in his newsletter, or offering fact-damaged celebrity journalism on the podcast "Worst Possible Timeline," his perspective hooks you; you can listen to the guy talk for hours.
While the mellower, rangier Self Defense Family's last album, 2018's Have You Considered Punk Music, showed Kindlon exploring his relationship to craft and creation, Drug Church's latest is a blow to the jaw.
Building on Cheer — their slickly produced and highly memorable third album from that year — Hygiene is a masterclass in dynamics; its performances and arrangements deftly push and pull the listener.
Granted, Kindlon doesn't write the music: guitarists Nick Cogan and Cory Galusha, bassist Patrick Nguyen and drummer Chris Villeneuve do. But as the mouthpiece, Kindlon is impossible to ignore.
In "Super Saturated," he castigates those who spend "Nights spent inside/ Gifted with endless foresight"; in "Million Miles of Fun," he's at wit's end with the news cycle. But following that tune is arguably the band's key song, and monument to humanity first: "Detective Lieutenant."
With an economy of language, Kindlon lays out the supremacy of pure artistic feeling: "If I do a double murder/ What this song did for you doesn't change an iota." When the chorus detonates, it amounts to a death-blow for those quick to cancel, unperson and vilify: "We don't toss away what we love/ I won't toss away what I love."
Militarie Gun
The most hardworking man in punk business is right in Drug Church's orbit: Ian Shelton has played in Self Defense Family, and co-hosted a cheeky hustle-and-grind podcast with Kindlon called "I Don't Care If This Ruins My Life."
Shelton established himself as the drummer and screamer in the grind-y punk band Regional Justice Center; when he got vocal about the band's conceptual roots in the prison system and his then-incarcerated brother, he found himself widely misunderstood — to his chagrin.
"People say I sing about the prison system. It's not even true!" he told GRAMMY.com in 2021 while hoofing it to an L.A. recording studio. "What I've done with my space in the press is that I've talked about it."
In interviews, Shelton may readily reference Securus Technologies and JPay, both for-profit prison firms that have had a deleterious effect on his family life. But the music he makes strikes a subtler, more personal note.
In both Regional Justice Center and his slightly more melodic, pop-centric band, Militarie Gun, Shelton grouses and howls about day-to-day anxieties and his Robert Pollard-like compulsion to continually create. (He's just over 30, but his Discogs page is getting frightening.)
While his Militarie Gun bandmates — guitarists Nick Cogan (also of Drug Church) and William Acuña, bassist Max Epstein, and drummer Vince Nyugen — weave jagged, colorful lines behind him, Shelton is gruff and immediate.
At a recent, sold-out gig at St. Vitus in Brooklyn, with fellow hardcore-adjacent acts Sugar Milk, Dazy, and MSPAINT, Shelton howled the chorus to "Don't Pick Up the Phone": "I want money/ I want love!" Suffice to say, bodies flew.
MSPAINT
Are MSPAINT hardcore? Are they dance-punk? Are they post-punk? They're none of it and all of it.
Along with Taylor Young of Twitching Tongues and God's Hate, Shelton co-produced their 2022 single "Acid" — the perfect entryway to these intriguing purveyors of synth-inflected heaviness. The ambiguous opening keyboard lines offer few clues of what's about to hit. Then it hits.
"We're beyond peace at this point/ It's just another ploy/ A marketing scheme tranquil and enjoyed/ By a network of demons yelling at the sky," singer Deedee howls, as the synths continue to churn, underpinning their slamming, declamatory punk.
Named after the infamous freeware, the Hattiesburg, Mississippi quartet of Deedee, synthesist Nick, bassist Randy, and drummer Quinn is relatively new on the scene; their self-titled EP dropped the week the pandemic hit.
But given the startling freshness of their young discography, it's tantalizing to wonder where they could go from here. Because this particular permutation of hardcore — one that meets electronic textures and block-rocking beats — has never been done quite this way.
Buggin
Initially called Buggin' Out before being compelled to change their name due to trademark infringement, Buggin is an excellent next stop if MSPAINT's Beastie Boys-style inflections are your thing.
Back when they were named after Giancarlo Espocito's character in Do the Right Thing, the Windy City hardcore crew slugged out an excellent self-titled debut EP, with plenty of '90s-style bounce and face-peeling performances from vocalist Bryanna Bennett.
The renamed band returned in 2021 with the heart-racing and profoundly fun Brainfreeze, a two-song single bundling the title track with a cover of the Beasties' Check Your Head cut "Gratitude" — previously interpreted by Rollins Band, the Transplants and Refused.
Buggin plans to release their debut album next year; in a 2022 interview with CVLT Nation, Bennett took their ever-swelling buzz in stride.
"For me, it's still crazy how much people like us all over," Bennett marveled. "In my mind, I'm just some guy that was tryna have fun with the homies and diversify our local scene." Sometimes, that's all it takes to breathe new life into a form of expression.
End It
Ah, the old heavy-music go-to — a sample of a quaint tune of yesteryear that melts and slows, before the band crashes in and steamrolls it.
In this case, poor Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces" is summarily shattered by End It in their track "BCHC" — or "Baltimore City Hate Crew."
"What's shaking, you f—ing chumps?" exhorts frontman Akil Godsey in the galloping 58-second opener to their 2022 EP Unpleasant Living. "You don't like us, and we don't like you/ Use your 24 to mind your f—ing business, and I'll mind mine, b—!"
From there, End It turn in some ferocious, dyed-in-the-wool hardcore, aided and abetted by another hardcore-crossover lynchpin: Justice Tripp from Trapped Under Ice and Angel Du$t. He appears on the class-struggle batterer "New Wage Slavery"; in the video, Godsey plays Omar from "The Wire."
Thanks to the deft writing of guitarists Johnny McMillion and Ray Lee, bassist Pat Martin, and drummer Chris Gonzalez, Unpleasant Living relays a coherent, cohesive statement in all of eight minutes.
After the acerbic scene commentary of "Hatekeeper," the Baltimore crew goes for the throat with crushing closer "The Comeback." You won't want End It to end it.
Speed
Representing the burgeoning hardcore scene Down Under are Speed, who dropped their latest EP, Gang Called Speed, last June. And the lead single, "Not That Nice," unflinchingly addresses one of the most reprehensible blights on society in recent memory.
"We wrote 'Not That Nice' in reaction to the Asian hate crimes born from the pandemic. The sad stories of innocent, good civilians falling victim to racial violence," vocalist Jem explained in a press release.
"I found myself thinking, 'This is someone's grandma, grandpa, mum, dad, child…' Unfortunately, much of this stems from the often perverted portrayal of Asian stereotypes in the media," he added. "To the scared and uneducated few, the sad reality is that this rhetoric translates to oppression and real-world violence."
Coming from Speed — three of its five members are of Southeast Asian descent — "Not That Nice" lands with brute impact. "We're breaking through/ Set fire to a f—ed up truth," Jem snarls in the tough-as-nails video: "Bite my tongue? They're racist/ My story ain't told by fools."
Clearly, "Not That Nice" and the other tracks landed: their set at Sound and Fury Festival in Los Angeles the following summer went so hard, the footage of the gonzo, seemingly bone-snapping pit went viral.
When the Instagram account @viralclipz posted it with the caption "Who's going to this concert lol," none other than Shaquille O'Neal responded "me."
Regulate
If you connect with the sound of Drug Church's Cheer and Hygiene, partly thank Jon Markson; he produced and engineered both albums. Also in his swelling portfolio is New York punks Regulate's 2022 self-titled album — their first in four years and a signal of swelling evolution.
That's partly because — much like the acclaimed Turnstile — vocalist Sebastian Paba reaches for influences far outside the scope of hardcore.
Listing the influences on the record for Brooklyn Vegan, Paba cited artists as divergent as James Brown ("a template for performers on stage and in the studio"), Bloc Party (calling Silent Alarm "a perfect record that builds drama and anticipation"), and Santana (praising their self-titled debut's "undeniable groove and swag.")
Paba's evocation of Santana is telling, as Regulate incorporates Latin sounds in innovative ways — as on "Ugata," which toggles from a diaphanous daydream to twisted riffage.
Identity-related themes pop up in the lyrics as well: "Hair" faces down racialized beauty standards, "C.O.P." reflects the age of reckoning with racist police killings, and "New York Hates You" positions the city in opposition to vampiric gentrifiers.
"This place will chew you up/ This place will spit you out," Yaba threatens. "Time to go home now/ We won't see you around." The NYHC kings have spoken.
Zulu
When it comes to hardcore's positive developments regarding unorthodoxy, adventurousness and inclusion, is there a band that ticks as many boxes as Zulu?
Hailing from Los Angeles, the all-Black powerviolence band — vocalist Anaiah Lei, guitarists Dez Yusuf and Braxton Marcellous, bassist Satchel Brown, and drummer Christine Cadette — deals heavily in themes of Black identity; when it comes to genre distinctions, they maintain an omnivorous muse.
"A lot of the influence comes from soul, and it comes from R&B, and it comes from reggae, and it comes from funk and jazz," Lei told Kerrang in 2022 of their two EPs, Our Day Will Come and My People… Hold On. "Somehow, it worked out really well." (Their next album, A New Tomorrow, due in 2023, promises to continue in that vein.)
As Lei went on to explain, this often manifests in interstitial samples that provide dynamism and contrast — both on record and in their live show. The opening track on My People… Hold On — which features the cover of a weeping Black mother and child — is a recitation of a poem by Alesia Miller.
"When I cry over the limitations put on my humanity, when I am scared of what age my nephew will be perceived as a threat, when I desire to be held and handled with fragility," Miller declares in the poem, "it only translates as bitterness to the ears that hear me."
When Zulu then barrels in with "Now They Are Through With Me," the effect isn't of one-size-fits-all, one-dimensional rage, but of a riveting spectrum of feeling.
"They got me caught from every angle/ Not just the white, blue and red/ It's my own blood and flesh," Lei screams. That viscera is unforgettable to behold.