Here at Revolver, we pride ourselves in living on the cutting edge of heavy music, from metal and hardcore to industrial and hip-hop, and we try to keep you on the front line, too, by giving you a deep look at the innovative noisemakers poised to shape the sound and the scene.
To that end, we've rounded up a handful of musicians who, we think, are on the rise across several different genres — from enigmatic noise-rap to jokerfied hardcore
Jezter
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Knocked Loose, World of Pleasure, Scarab
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Jezter's February EP, For the Amusement of You, is one of the best (and heaviest) hardcore releases of 2024 thus far. The Daytona Beach band — featuring Psycho-Frame/Moodring songwriter Hunter Young — have a maniacal jester theme to their artwork, song titles and lyrics, which works so well with their playfully evil sound.
Jezter claim influence from down-and-dirty metallic hardcore bands like Bracewar and Down to Nothing, but their new EP's sleek production, retina-stabbing guitar licks and bludgeoning breakdowns are more akin to modern heavyweights like Knocked Loose — even if the songwriting is groovier, faster and more hardcore-oriented.
QUOTE "I love hardcore and I've never really gotten to make music in some of the ways that I've desired," Young tells Revolver. "Jezter is definitely a fresh approach, mentally, where I can just write fast hardcore with mosh riffs and have fun. I think my more metal influences definitely creep in but it just makes for a cool fusion of sounds, and adds a bit of darkness."
LustSickPuppy
RIYL Death Grips, Ho99o9, Machine Girl
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Brooklyn's LustSickPuppy is a total enigma, a bracing rapper-producer-singer-performance artist whose music draws inspiration from System of a Down, Missy Elliot and Car Bomb all at once.
Flitting wildly between ear-gasming breakcore and sand-blasted noise-rap, their forthcoming album, Carousel from Hell (out April 26th), is a total trip. There's no one else out there who sounds — or looks, considering their avant-garde fashion sense — quite like LustSickPuppy.
QUOTE "LustSickPuppy started as a result of being sick of male-dominated spaces, hatred of censorship and the dominion over women's bodies, and a general love for fast, wild, chaotic music," they say. "My smiley-face face-paint represents having to smile your way through a completely rigged system and not being allowed to show any disapproval for it in order to survive."
They add: "I want a generation of young black artists to reach their full potential. And know that they can be in spaces that they could have never imagined themselves in and have the confidence to take up space."
Collateral
RIYL Agnostic Front, Stop and Think, Outburst
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE While Collateral themselves seem to bristle at the increasingly common term "regular hardcore," it's not a bad shorthand for describing the South Florida band's old-school, no-bullshit, side-to-fucking-side-inciting hardcore screeds.
Their 2024 seven-inch, We Still Know, has a classic NYHC bark, but a bite that feels distinctly modern in the way Collateral slyly pluck influence from the last 20 years of "old-school" hardcore revivalists, from Lockin' Out stompers to Mosher's Delight sprinters. Regular hardcore, but an irregular degree of mastery.
QUOTE "We just wanted a burst of short-and-sweet songs you can point your finger and dance side to side to," drummer Michael says of their new EP. "That also incorporated our ideals regarding what the essence of hardcore sounds like, looks like, and feels like.
"Obviously, hardcore can be fun in a participatory way, but it matters a lot to us that we have things we want to say, messages we wanna pass on, especially to the younger generations coming into the scene currently."
Sinister Feeling
RIYL Nails, Weekend Nachos, Sex Prisoner
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Alongside groups like World I Hate and Killing Pace, Baltimore's Sinister Feeling — who boast three members of Jivebomb — are reviving a nasty, no-holds-barred form of buffed-up powerviolence that seemed to drop out of the zeitgeist from the mid-2010s onward.
The band's new self-titled album is a delightfully relentless assault of blast beats, caustic riffs and tastefully inserted mosh grooves. It fucking rules, and with recent shows supporting Mindforce, Big Boy, Balmora and more, it's obvious that Sinister Feeling's sound is resonating.
QUOTE "Short and sweet [was] the main idea for the record," says guitarist Ethan Butter. "Lyrically, [Sinister Feeling vocalist] Sean wrote about a mix of personal trials and tribulations and the current social and political climate. The artwork is meant to reflect those ideas while also obviously taking influence from classic powerviolence art."
CNTS
RIYL Black Flag, Melvins, FIDLAR
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE CNTS' new album, Thoughts and Prayers, is influenced by two things: "Bon Scott-era AC/DC and Black Flag. That's it," says guitarist Michael Crain. The L.A. rascals went on hold after their 2019 debut when Crain (also of Dead Cross) was diagnosed with cancer — he beat it — and frontman Matt Cronk lost his voice in a freak surgery mishap.
He recovered, too, and now the scuzzy noise-punkers sound more energized and ugly than ever on instant dirtbag anthems like "Smart Mouth" and "I Won't Work for You."
QUOTE "The doctors told me if my voice ever came back, it would likely take years," Cronk tells us. "So I kinda settled into the idea that my singing days were over. Had I known my voice would come back in seven months it would have been much easier to deal with.
"So, there's a lot of that sadness and frustration in some of the songs, but more so, there is a feeling of catharsis and celebration. As a band and as individuals, we've been through the grinder and we're ready to make some noise and have fun."
