I never saw myself as an outsider. Even though I grew up in a small town and had a very distinct taste in music, I always had a good bunch of friends. To this day I tend to get along with most people I meet. Maybe this has caused me to have a strange relation to hardcore. From time to time I love to pull out „One with the Underdogs“ from the shelf and mosh through my flat. Gorilla Biscuits are obviously as integral to my record collection as „After the Eulogy„. But maybe I’m missing the bad childhood, the growing up in the big city or the fragmentation and isolation at school to fully delve into posi-core or NYC hardcore.
I was far more interested in political hardcore because that is what you are supposed to listen to when you are young and see yourself as a politically interested young kid. Once you get tired of empty slogans and taking yourself and the music scene way too serious, you start looking for something else. That’s when I turned to self-reflective music, Rites of Spring, Poison the Well and the likes. I got what they said and I could connect to them as a kid making the first steps into adulthood.
I think its this past that I get reminded of a lot, when I first listened to La Dispute, Touché Amoré or when I listen to Frameworks now. Loom is a brilliant album and full of all the things I love about hardcore. It’s angry, it’s loud, it’s fast, it has the right amount of breakdowns, it is that tad bit experimental and the space the songs are given only add to the destructive qualities of the songs. The vocals are pissed off and mournful at the same time. The whole production reminds me of late 1990s Florida-New-School (think Morning Again) infused with Bane’s punk attitude and the chaotic structures of Circle Takes the Square.
In the end it’s a modern hardcore album that reminds me a lot of my own past. It is so emotional that at times it’s hard to digest. But it’s moving like only a few others. Maybe it has all the aggression that I’ve been missing in the new La Dispute album without falling into a deafening pit of noise. It’s beautiful like the friend you always loved but never dared to tell. It’s an album to listen with the volume turned to 11!
Loom by Frameworks is out now via Topshelf Records. You can pick up a copy here.
