Welcome back to the Listen Up, Nerds Newsletter. If you subscribed through Tuesday’s newsletter about Self Defense Family, thanks for joining us on the quest to beat Jeff Tweedy and Vulfpeck on the Music Substack rankings. I am becoming obsessed with this goal and it is concerning to everyone around me. This would be a wakeup call, but my friends and family are likely agents of the Indie Rock Superstructure and are being paid by Jeff Tweedy to stop me. They will not win.
Every week, I do a quick rundown of some of the music I’m excited about this week. I focus on new music, but sometimes I’ll talk about old releases. Not in the whimsical nostalgic way, either. I’m tough and strong and I am always pushing forward, never once looking back on any experience I’ve had. I promise you that I would never use poetic license to talk about something that I saw 10+ years ago. I will not muse.
First off, let’s talk about money. Money is a band from Oklahoma who plays alternative rock in the style of Deftones, Far, and Narrow Head. I find it refreshing and honest that they put “alternative rock” and “hard rock” in their bandcamp tags instead of skirting the issue. I’ve never had to put tags in a bandcamp page but if it’s like any other point of life where you have to define yourself, I’m sure it gives you a mild existential crisis over something that nobody else would ever notice. I noticed, but that’s because I’m getting paid to have attention to details like that and write about them.
Back to the music: It rocks. It’s not often that nu-grunge leans into its radio rock roots without sounding corny. Most bands in this realm that try, fail. There’s a fine line between sounding like you’d belong in a 33-Minute Rock Block on X103 and sounding like Defiler from that one episode of The Sopranos. Money falls into the latter category and is a faithful recreation of the early-’00s alt rock that is celebrated by so many moodboards and meme accounts in 2023. The guitar tones send this one over the edge and the band is very skilled at endings. The break at the end of “Down4ever” is a modern classic and closeout track “Slower Heaven,” with its riffs and walls of noise, sounds like Hum in a way that isn’t derivative. It sounds like it fits. The band just released this EP as a 12” on Sunday Drive Records and it is already sold out. Money is definitely a band to watch, and Sunday Drive Records is doing something special as well.
Last week I went and saw Incendiary play a 10-year anniversary show for their first LP, Cost of Living. Do you know who’s a really good band? Incendiary. I think I’ve seen Incendiary four or five times now and I’ve never once been disappointed with what I’ve watched. It’s always such a good time and part of that is because the vibe is immaculate. Incendiary, by virtue of not playing a ton of shows these days, have made almost every appearance into a bit of a celebration. That made last week’s actual celebration even more special. I called them “American Nu-Metal Band Incendiary” on twitter and nobody batted an eye, either because nobody cares about what I have to say (not true, you’re reading this substack) or because it’s the truth (which is true). Incendiary Guy raps his way through all of his verses in that plaid shirt every time I’ve seen them and you know what? That’s dope. That’s what I like to hear. My man crushes every single time because he knows how to work a crowd, which is by saying very little and letting the riffs and the jams go on. He said some very nice things about the record and the band played a slideshow of cute old photos before they did their encore. Then they played “Front Towards Enemy” to end the show and Elsewhere popped off in a way I hadn’t seen before. Granted, I’m not at a ton of shows at Elsewhere, but it was awesome.
Inclination opened for them and they had a ton of energy, which is a very nice way to say that I don’t remember the songs they played outside of the one where Tom from Indecision came out and did vocals. That was pretty cool. A lot of my friends liked the Inclination album from last year, Unaltered Perspective. That’s such a straight edge name for an album, which I didn’t think they’d beat after their EP named Midwest Straight Edge. I didn’t listen to the new album, it slipped through the cracks for me.
The last time I listened to them, I thought they were getting dangerously close to sounding like Unbroken, which I think would be Really Cool. Anyway I’ll listen to Unaltered Perspective at some point, I’m sure. I’m just really deep into my groove of listening to defunct youth crew bands. One of these days, I’ll run out of youth crew to talk about, but that day is not today.
That’s because today, I am talking about Full Stride. Hoosier Straight Edge/Youth Crew, baby! I’m from Indiana! I tell people about it all of the time because it’s almost offputting when someone in New York finds out you’re from FLYOVER COUNTRY. Like being goth or telling someone you love tinned fish, someone wack is going to turn their nose up at you being a hayseed.
One of the most appealing things about this demo is how it sounds a little looser than straight edge, and especially youth crew, hardcore would imply. There’s a militant sound in the drums from bands like SSD or Youth Of Today, like it’s rallying the troops. This is a band who sonically recognizes that being straight edge is for the weirdos and outcasts. Not going to fall into the trope of, “actually it’s punk rock to go against the grain of punk rock,” but I will say that butting up against the tradition of youth crew makes for a more interesting listen than most straight edge bands. Consider that Fury, a favorite band of the newsletter, originally said they were a youth crew band. Like Fury, Full Stride is really good at snapping back and forth from those loose moments to battening down the hatches for a 2-step part. Dear Reader, I caught myself doing a little 2-step action at my desk the other day while listening to Full Stride and that’s a sign of approval.
Backtracking to live shows for a second, edge banter is maybe the worst banter you’ll ever have to sit through in subculture. I don’t need some terrible monologue about how we’re all “messed up kids” and “we love each other.” I am 31 years old and I have bills that I need to pay. I am not in a scene! I am not friends with 95% of the people in the room. I am a fan of live music and a patron of the arts!!!! I saw Youth Of Today a few months back and Ray Cappo was talking about how we should all be peaceful and respect one another, stopping just short of saying, “There’s only one race: The Human Race 😌.” What a load of hogwash. The only definitively edge band with genuine good banter is Agitator, because even if they were not a good band, that dude HATED drugs/alcohol and HATED when people broke edge. I do not endorse listening to that band but I do endorse confrontational stage banter, as evidenced by Tuesday’s post.
I’m realizing that a lot of my writing about guitar-based subculture music relies on me referencing other bands that current bands sound like and I’m trying to be less recursive in my writing and less insular, so I’m going to write a whole paragraph about the Kinetic Orbital Strike demo from the end of 2022 and not mention a single time in the paragraph that they sound like Cursed. Here goes nothing:
Kinetic Orbital Strike is a callback to the early and mid-aughts where the untapped evil of hardcore was finally summoned. Their demo is full of blackened hardcore that fans of metal and hardcore will enjoy equally, and guys who wear really skinny black jeans will love even more than both of those groups. It’s not Mysterious Guy Hardcore but it’s definitely the type of Hardcore that Mysterious Guys like. There are a lot of bands that sound like this, so how does this one stand out from the rest? That question is answered within the first three seconds of pressing “Play.” Those drum fills are high-level fills, and the entire record is full of beat feats that sink into the background and only appear on repeated listens. The drummer here is so talented that it all sounds natural even if they’re wailing on the kit. What most bands in this genre mask with noise and old war film samples, KOS fights with percussion. In a sea of shredded black t-shirts, standing out is nigh impossible, but those drums set the band apart from the others. To borrow a line from Abe Simpson, these are some blastbeats you can set a watch to. Overall, I think that exercises (exorcisms?) in evil hardcore can be futile if you’re not offering much different than other bands, but the drums and sing-along parts on this record scratch an itch that I didn’t know I had. Big fan, really looking forward to whatever comes next. And if nothing comes next, then I’m really looking forward to running this tape back more and more.
Do you know how hard it was for me to not say that they remind me a lot of Cursed, Cursed I era in particular? It was SO hard. They’re great. I understand that this is the new project from Chris Ulsh, who drummed in Power Trip before their untimely demise. Blake Ibanez, also from Power Trip, started a band called Fugitive with members of Iron Age and Skourge, and that EP is similarly evil but in a more metallic way.
Ok I am absolutely exhausted after trying to not talk about Cursed for 1500 words at the end of this newsletter but one day, I’ll get my chance. Until then, thanks for reading and be well. I’ll see you next week.