by Mick Reed
I'm not one to take the music press too seriously, but when I hear several outlets claim that hardcore punk is back and that bands Knocked Loose and Code Orange are the vanguard of the emerging scene, I certainly take interest. It feels a little weird to say that hardcore has come back in 2019, because for myself and others, it never really went away. Hardcore punk is basically the Giving Tree cross-pollinated with the hydra from the Voyage of the Argo. Every time it drops a fruit or loses a limb to foster a new sub-genre its missing appendage grows back two-fold. The beer-fueled pit-strafing teen-angst explosions of Black Flag constructed the backbone of contemporary rock music's DIY ethic and sound, Husker Du’s melodic exercises set the groundwork for the pop-punk explosion of the ‘90’s, Fugazi’s emotive outbursts and contemplative arrangements form the cornerstone of emo’s sound, and New York hardcore’s genre warping forays into thrash build the sonic infrastructure necessary to turn alternative metal into a viable radio format, offering Henry Rollins a second chance at a music career after Black Flag (punk rock is a flat circle bitch!). Of course, all of this history only takes us to about 1995, after which things accelerate with hardcore bands experimenting with harsher, more punishing sounds and began dabbling in electronic music, while opening up subject matter wise to be more vulnerable lyrically. That’s where Knocked Loose enter this story.
Knocked Loose aren't old heads, but you wouldn’t know that from listening to them. Their down-tuned churn, clashing grooves, and studied integration of extreme metal fundamentals puts them in the company of bands like Botch and Converge, but their sound isn’t reducible to their influences. Brian Garris has stated as much in an interview with Alternative Press, informing the reader that, while the band draws heavily from the metalcore and metallic-hardcore of twenty years ago, their intention is to make music that steps beyond the boundaries of these confining labels. After listening to their second LP A Different Shade of Blue, I can confirm that they’ve succeeded at this stated goal in the same manner as a pride of lions succeeds when it brings down an antelope. In other words, Knocked Loose has ripped punk rock a new one, and now the rest of us can feast on the bounty of brutality they have wrought upon the scene.
The first minute of A Different Shade of Blue sets the tone for the entire album, “Belleville” opens immediately with squalling feedback and a thunderous death metal groove at full gate, picking up intensity by dipping into a thorny breakdown only to emerge into a stumbling crawl through a razor lined corridor of regret. The emotive and sonic qualities of this first track are explored in varying degrees and through different lenses on later cuts, but the energy never lets up. It is this violence of emotion that is most shocking and intriguing about the album. Over the course of forty minutes, Garris’ pained gasping cry is never abated, never subdued, and never sated, while Isaac Hale’s leads cut and burn like an aluminum knife, Cole Crutchfield’s death rattle gives the sound an oppressive air while holding down a fractious and dynamic groove on rhythm guitar with the help of Kevin Otten on bass, all of which combine into a sonic suicide plunge into the dark night of the soul, dragged to its fate by ruthless propulsion of Kevin Kaine’s drumwork. An example of this death defying motion in action can be found on the tumbling fury of “A Serpent’s Touch” which has a ringing, hollow quality to the mix that makes it the more unsettling to witness. “Mistakes Like Fractures” has a similar spirit rattling essence, with vice-like grooves twisted, knotting, and snapping from the unbearable tension of it all, and Garris standing on-top of this gap-laden, shifting and obtuse surface, pouring his throat lacerating angst into the fathomless void bellow. A Different Shade of Blue is the memory hole where we’ve banished the fear and resentment of your living world, brought back and made manifest through a nightmare of sound.
It’s hard to argue that Knocked Loose is a rehash of late ‘90s trends in underground punk if for no other reason than the scissoring angst they display feels very much a necessary component of the soundtrack of our times. While previously, the punishing crunch of Turmoil and the blinding angularity of Snapcase felt like outliers in the scene, twenty years of recession and regressive politics have proven these musician’s prescience and enduring nature. Knocked Loose in inheriting the torch of these forbearers has enhanced the flame and used it to light the fire for a new audience. They are a sign that spirit of hardcore has never been snuffed out, and through its various mutations, has only grown in its function as the art form best suited to lead us into a better understanding of ourselves in the light of a new day.