The brands are getting involved with underground music again. In this case, the brand in question is Stone Island, the Italian luxury sportswear company with the nautical-star logo. The underground music is four of the biggest and best bands involved in hardcore and its adjacent worlds: Angel Du$t, Haywire, High Vis, and Knocked Loose. Together, those four bands are the subjects of The Calm & The Chaos, a new short film and photography project that documented all four bands while they were on recent tours. It involves members of those bands, both onstage and off, wearing what the company Instagram account calls "a mix of current and vintage Stone Island garments."
For The Calm & The Chaos, the photographer and director Isaac Lamb — not, as far as I can tell, the same Isaac Lamb who plays drums in the metalcore band Kublai Khan — spent six months on tour with those four bands, all of whom were on the road separately around the same time. The resulting two-minute short film is not an ad, exactly, but it's not not an ad either. High Vis frontman Graham Sayle wrote and spoke the narration in the film, poetically rhapsodizing about the nature of the global hardcore scene in about the heaviest British accent you ever heard in your life:
More than a scene or a sonic description, became the approach to every facet of me life. A space for all me hopes, fears, anxieties. A place to become uninhibited and free. Making lifelong connections around the world. Born out of silent understanding that we share the same ideals and beliefs. Friendships forged in sweat and sound. Self-regulating, self-made. Paying respects to those that built the foundations, supporting those who keep the spirit alive. Untainted by aspiration. Place for energy in its rawest form. A sense of belonging in basements, in the backrooms of small-town pubs. In new shapes of old forms, celebrating energy over ability, intention over technique. A place to see. A place to be seen. A place to learn. A place to disappear. A place to forget in the familiar unpredictability. Volatile and unstable. A calm amongst the chaos. In violence without malice. Creation for the love of it. Reflecting the energy that you put in. Reassured in the fact that no one’s gonna do it for you and if you want it done then you better do it yourself. Putting contribution over consumption. A place for anyone. Not a place for everyone.
So! Let's talk about it. Stone Island makes expensive clothes. If you go shopping on their website, a jacket might run you as much as $1,400. The brand has a long history in English football terrace culture, which isn't that far off from hardcore, especially if you get a band like High Vis involved. The Gallagher brothers of Oasis are big fans, but they are evidently not tough enough for a campaign like this. Also, Knocked Loose guitarist Isaac Hale, also of bands like Inclination and XWeaponX, was part of a Stone Island campaign last year.
Anytime a company like Stone Island turns its spotlight on something like the hardcore, scene, you're going to see some mixed reactions, and that's already happening on Reddit right now. I was going to say that this kind of thing would've been seen as irredeemably corny in hardcore a generation or two ago, but the truth is that it would've only been verboten in certain hardcore circles, just as it would now. I caught some my first hardcore sets, bands like Sick Of It All and CIV, at a little thing called the Vans Warped Tour in the 1990s. Vans wasn't selling shoes for $1,400, but that's the only real substantive difference.
Someone at Stone Island evidently decided that it would be wise to identify itself with hardcore and to economically support a project like this. There could be many reasons for this, and one of them is certainly the reality that people in hardcore bands tend to look extremely cool, that there are few things on earth more visually arresting than a great hardcore show. You can see that in the film and the accompanying photos. (A tour book is also set to come out in September 2027.) It all looks fantastic.
Whenever something like this happens, there's a general tendency to scoff, especially among online commenter types who are not that involved with hardcore. When confronted with this kind of phenomenon, I try to take a look at myself. If someone were to offer me expensive clothes for free, and maybe also a check, to be photographed wearing those clothes while doing my job, would I take that deal? Personally, I'd be conflicted about the prospect, but I'd probably say yes. (Very little danger of that happening. Blogging does not look cool.)
You can see the results for yourself below.
