Clockface - ST EP 2026 - REVIEW

Clockface - ST EP 2026

Clockface are a fresh band out of Chicago Illinois/Detroit that cite themselves as 'hardcore that sounds like hardcore' and I couldn't love that notion any more. 

They've been at it since 2024 and while their original demo maybe didn't make a wave on the wider scene I really think this EP is one that's worth its salt. There's no frills and no gimmicks here while keeping the quality levels high. 

As soon as I heard this EP I knew it was going to be one for me , and it didn't lose my attention throughout the entire project. 'Opposite and true' is a real hard hitter, its got the fast visceral start before snowballing into a breakdown that would bring you out of mosh retirement. 

This isnt a project that boasts a tough guy aesthetic and viewing the lyrics it manages to remain emotional while maintaining a certain level of stank face that every good HC project truly needs. 

'Blot' is probably my favorite track on this EP , the main riff being something indicative of an early NYHC banger or even comparable to some Combust material. This track shows that the clock has many faces and isn't confined to any boxes you would maybe put certain hardcore bands in. 

Its evident to see how hard this band have been working over the last couple of years from the amount of material they've put out and I think they've given themselves a massive platform to jump off of with this release. Would love to see them across the pond in the UK one day.

Check them out on Instagram @clockface_hc and check back in with this band, even if they don't blow the way I expect then well worth keeping up with either way. They're rocking with another one of my personal favorite's Jivebomb in Detroit on March 27th and I wish them the best of luck in the future. 

Break Them – To the Death (2026) - REVIEW

Break Them – To the Death (2026)

Straight away this record is giving UK’s answer to early Hatebreed/Smash Your Enemies. No peace for my enemies feels like a clenched fist militant anthem.

If you needed something to put the stomp in your step this record is for you. My favourite track across the EP is ‘Trench raid’ the mid track stomp section has got to be killer live and I am still yet to catch Break Them!! I think there’s a lot more to come from this band and have seen them and their team working hard for their local scene and surrounds for a number of years. The hard work is definitely paying off with this one! Go check out Break Them at the East Anglia takeover in Lincoln , hosted by Fenland hardcore on Friday the 10th of April.

Nylon – Single Shot (2026) - REVIEW BY @JDPROSHO

Nylon – Single Shot EP

Single Shot by Rhapsody favourite Sheffield Stormtroopers Nylon is exactly what it sounds like: fast, filthy, and fired straight from the wrist with no regard for recoil. It’s four tracks of pure Steel City chaos, an audio bruise that reminds you why Nylon are at the top of the Uk Hardcore tree.

Since their 2024 acclaimed Chariot of the Gods, Nylon have spent basically all of 2025 doing the touring equivalent of a triathlon — sprinting between cities, festivals and any space that will have them, including a couple of shows up in Teesside. Single Shot feels like a postcard from that road‑worn mission: battered, grimy, and absolutely vibrating with the adrenaline of dozens of shows’ worth of crowd‑kill energy.

Single Shot doesn’t waste time — or even acknowledge the idea of time. From the first snare crack, Nylon come in swinging like they’re trying to shake the rafters of whatever building you’re listening in. Their signature cocktail of brutish punk aggression and chugging, hardcore breakdowns remains fully intact, only now it’s been marinated in endless tour miles and shows a band shaped by their experiences out on the road.

The guitars scrape and grind with that classic UKHC grit — like a rusted buzzsaw held together with duct tape. The rhythm section sounds one minor inconvenience away from full structural collapse, what’s interesting about Single Shot, though, is the subtle shift beneath the carnage. Nylon are letting melody seep into the cracks of their sound — not via any singalong hooks, but in the sense that something more expansive is bubbling under the surface of the chaos.

If this EP is a pulse check on where they’re heading for 2026, the outlook is wild: bigger ideas, bigger swings, and possibly the most melodic direction they’ve attempted yet. Just South Yorkshire hardcore at its rowdiest, and a warning shot for what they’ve got cooking over the next year.

Eight minutes. Four tracks. Zero pretension.

Written by @jdprosho

Indigo Ice – No Closure (2026) - REVIEW BY @JDPROSHO

Indigo Ice – No Closure

Indigo Ice’s new offering No Closure arrives like a steel‑toed boot to the temple; it’s seven tracks of mathcore‑meets‑deathcore chaos.

A kind of sonic panic attack that acts as a phenomenal follow up to their 2023 record Phantom Limb which flirted with the established rules of the genre, whilst No Closure is the moment the band snaps those rules over their knee. This is Indigo Ice doubling down on their own identity — less mimicry, more mutation.

It’s still recognizably mathcore, yes, but now it feels like they’ve redrawn the blueprint in their own image entirely.

The first thing that hits you is the drumming — Spencer Brown’s fast, pounding, borderline‑cardiac rhythms form the backbone of the album. His kit might as well be a tectonic plate, everything else violently shifting around it. Each blast beat sounds like it’s trying to escape its body.

Then there’s Cliff Aubut, who doesn’t so much provide vocals as he does exorcise whatever demons lay deep within. His screeches and guttural screams feel physically unsafe, like they were recorded in violation of several workplace safety regulations.

Hovering above and occasionally detonating beneath everything is Mike James, whose multi‑instrumental contributions feel like he’s speed‑running a lifetime of musical training in real time. He shifts between twiddly intricacy and blunt‑force deathcore with the confidence of someone who has nothing left to prove and no concerns about whether your speakers survive.

“Death Diva” is the show-stealer — a writhing, concussive onslaught that grabs your nervous system by the shoulders and screams directly into its face. 

“Progenial Martyrdom” and “Your Celestial Drift” are other stand out tracks with heavy breakdowns and enough traditional hardcore DNA to satisfy the old heads looking for something familiar to lose themselves in. These tracks keep the record tethered to the genre’s roots, even as Indigo Ice gleefully shreds the rulebook.

No Closure is a short, savage, deeply considered assault that will satisfy fans of Car Bomb and Johnny Booth equally. It marks Indigo Ice not just as mathcore disciples but as innovators ready to carve their own serrated path forward.

Written by @jdprosho

Phasma – Purgatory (2026) - REVIEW BY @JDPROSHO

 Phasma – Purgatory

Greek deathcore group Phasma’s new offering ‘Purgatory’ is easily their most hostile, dissonant, and deranged work to date — a record that feels less like a collection of songs and more like a psychological event.

Phasma have never been subtle, but Purgatory makes their earlier material sound almost polite by comparison. This is a violent reimagining of their sound: darker, dingier, and saturated with the kind of chaotic songwriting, the guitars no longer riff as much as they grind, scrape, and collapse into each other. The vocals sound like they’re coming from someone who has lived in the walls of an abandoned building for several months. Everything is detuned, decaying, and deliberately uncomfortable.

This is deathcore, yes — but only technically. Purgatory is less concerned with genre allegiance and more focused on how many different sonic encounters it can cram into a single release. There are breakdowns, but they’re warped and contorted, landing like steel beams dropped from a great height. There are blast beats, but they disintegrate into black‑metal tremolos, industrial noise, and sludge‑soaked grooves. It’s pure genre‑melding chaos.

What makes it compelling rather than just punishing is the sense of intention beneath the madness. Phasma aren’t so much throwing paint at the wall — they’re meticulously arranging their sonic debris into something that feels ritualistic. Nothing on Purgatory is clean. The production is smeared and grimy, the edges intentionally frayed, like the mix itself is decomposing. But the clarity comes through in the choices: the sudden drops, the jagged transitions, the moments where they let silence hang just long enough for your pulse to spike before launching back into violence.

Lyrically, the themes match the music: desolation, spiritual rot, internal purging, the slow collapse of the self under pressure. Even at its most atmospheric, Purgatory feels like it’s trying to drag you somewhere you don’t want to go.

Where many deathcore bands polish their brutality into something digestible, Phasma refuse that path entirely. Purgatory is rough, uncomfortable, and genuinely unsettling — and that’s the point.

For fans of extreme music, Purgatory is a reminder that chaos, when done right, is its own kind of beauty. It’s a record that doesn’t ask for your attention so much as demand it, grab it by the throat, and hold it against a wall until the final seconds fade out.

Written by @jdprosho

King Street – Parting Shots (2026) - REVIEW BY @JDPROSHO

 King Street – Parting Shots (2026)

London hardcore has been experiencing one of its periodic explosions—new venues, new faces, new bands insisting they’re the next great export. 

But even in a scene this crowded, King Street have always had an aura of inevitability. The capital’s long‑running beatdown specialists have earned a reputation for weaponizing chaos, turning every show into a controlled demolition. And yet on Parting Shots, their new six‑track EP and first release since 2024’s full‑length War Scrolls, they manage something few veteran bands ever do: meaningful evolution without losing any of the fight.

King Street have always been heavy but this record is different. The aggression is still there, thick and unavoidable, but the delivery is noticeably more refined. Parting Shots feels structured, intentional, even strategic. There are riffs everywhere but they’re organised this time rather than flung at your head all at once. It’s the band’s most self‑assured release so far, and the moment where they stop being “one of London’s hardest bands” and become one of its most important.

The EP’s identity is inseparable from the city that shaped it. London hangs over these tracks like smog over the Thames. The themes—generational struggle, political hostility, fractured families, the slow grind of trying to find meaning in a place that takes more than it gives—are all pulled straight from lived experience. Hardcore bands often claim authenticity; King Street don’t have to claim anything. It’s baked into every section, every barked lyric, every groove.

Even the artwork reinforces the point. The EP’s demonic, frenzied visual identity, created by iamanartistyouknow, looks like something found spray‑painted on a derelict South London underpass. It matches the music’s tone: raw, urban, and unsettling in a way that feels earnestly local rather than curated for international cool.

The production deserves special recognition. Engineered at Persepolis Studios in Chelmsford by bassist Matt Darby, the EP sounds like a live show trapped inside a studio—tight enough to highlight the band’s evolution but volatile enough to still feel dangerous. King Street’s gigs have always been a spectacle of bodies and noise and Parting Shots captures that energy unnervingly well. It moves fast, it hits hard, and it doesn’t waste time.

Their résumé includes sharing stages with hardcore pillars like Terror and Madball—acts whose influence is still audible but no longer overpowering. King Street aren’t imitating anyone anymore. They’re writing with the confidence of a band that understands its own mythology and is ready to build on it.

Across its six tracks, Parting Shots positions King Street as a defining presence in an increasingly competitive London hardcore scene. It’s the sound of a band that knows its strengths, confronts its weaknesses, and emerges sharper, heavier, and more purposeful.

 

Written by @jdprosho

Without Love – Diminishing Returns (2026) - REVIEW BY @JDPROSHO

Without Love – Diminishing Returns (2026)

Diminishing Returns, the new 17‑minute blast from Yorkshire‑rooted hardcore collective Without Love, is sharp, tightly‑wound, and somehow still scrappier than half the bands trying twice as hard.

Clocking in at eight tracks, the record barely gives you time to get your balance before ripping it away again. It’s the band’s first release since signing to US hardcore institution Indecision Records, and you can hear the shift immediately — not in a compromising way, but the sound is cleaner, tighter, more deliberately shaped. Yet the same grit that’s made them a staple of modern British hardcore still bleeds through.

Lyrically, Diminishing Returns hits the familiar emotional trinity that fuels most great hardcore: frustration, resilience, and the kind of community‑minded collectivism that can only be born from years of criss‑crossing the continent playing all manner of towns and venues. There’s anger here, sure, but it’s not nihilistic. It’s the kind of anger that wants the scene to be better, not burn it down.

The standout moments arrive fast and frantic. “The Forever War” is the band at their most feral - it’s got the speed‑run urgency of Youth of Today and the melodic bounce of Gorilla Biscuits, which is fitting considering Without Love will be sharing UK stages with GB soon.

Then there’s the more anthemic “With Hands Tied,”. It leans heavier, a little darker, flirting with emo in the way early Have Heart could without ever compromising intensity.

Fans of Bane, early Comeback Kid, and more melodic hardcore which blends emotional honesty and two‑step‑ready riffs will feel right at home here. The record never overstays its welcome, but it also never feels rushed. That’s particularly impressive considering Without Love’s history of short, chaotic releases including their 2021 split EP release with hardcore stalwarts Time Heist.

The production is the unsung hero here. It’s crisp enough to showcase the band’s increasingly mature songwriting, but raw enough to feel like it was recorded in a room with condensation dripping from the ceiling.

Diminishing Returns might be short, but it’s the most fully-realized thing Without Love have ever released. It’s a reminder that modern British hardcore doesn’t need to mimic its American influences to be world‑class — but when it draws from them, it can go toe‑to‑toe with the best. It’s urgent, memorable, and quietly massive.

Written by @jdprosho