Last weekend was Sound And Fury weekend, the moment for the gigantic Los Angeles festival that remains the biggest annual item on the hardcore calendar. We're deep in the afterglow. Haywire and God's Hate have both dropped new music since playing Sound And Fury, and now that list also includes the fiery Tampa straight-edge crew Contention.
Contention bring wild-eyed, idealistic commitment to '90s-style heavy hardcore, and their fucking awesome full-length Artillery From Heaven was one of my favorite hardcore albums of 2024. Last night, the band announced that they'd have a new EP called Nuclear Summer out at midnight. It's here now, and it's fucking awesome.
Nuclear Summer has two absolutely crushing new songs, "Second Sun" and "Blank Stare," as well as a cover of the Swarm's 1999 straight-edge anthem "Upside Your Head," along with its "X On Our Knees" intro. This is some primal, intense, deeply satisfying mosh music. Here's what vocalist Cosmo Vidussi says about it:
Modernity brings no enlightenment, only more refined methods of annihilation. Annihilation of the enemy. Annihilation of the self. Our leaders have shed their increasingly thin facades of humanity. The masses shamble through life in a drug and media fueled haze. They worship a machine that grinds them to dust and uses them for fuel. Cities are leveled in our name. Bombs are assembled with our tax dollars. We’re held hostage by a small group of deranged degenerates with nuclear arsenals and a lust for ruin.
Are these the final days? Or is the suffering of modernity only a single day swallowed by a quarter eon of unchecked brutality?
Two new tracks: "Second Sun" and "Blank Stare." Two covers by the Swarm, a band we’ve cited as an inspiration since our first band practice in 2019. Nuclear Summer, hardcore for the end times.
Hell yeah. Listen below.
TOUR DATES:
9/25 - Gainesville, FL @ The Ox
9/26 - Daytona Beach, FL @ Iron Horse Saloon (Nightshift Party Weekend)
11/12 - Nashville, TN @ Eastside Bowl *
11/13 - Atlanta, GA @ The Masquerade Hell *
11/14 - Tampa, FL @ The Orpheum *
11/16 - Miami, FL @ Lincoln's Beard *
* with Pain Of Truth, Madball, Rotting Out, & xforever warx
The Nuclear Summer EP is out now on DAZE.
