Band To Watch: Angel Du$t

Kali Kahn

Band To Watch: Angel Du$t

Kali Kahn

When I was growing up in Baltimore in the ’90s, the city had basically no hardcore scene. We had one great band — Torn Apart — but that was basically it. For the most part, we were a crust-punk town. So it’s been fascinating to see my hometown, over the last few years, become a hotbed for the Champion-hoodie school of fast, grunty, fists-whirling hardcore. Bands like Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice are among the biggest bands that the genre has produced in recent years. And now members of both bands have come together to form Angel Du$t, a hybrid beast of a band who have found multiple ways to kick heads in.

Angel Du$t, like Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice, are very much a hardcore band. They play fast, they riff heavily, and they’re big on chanted bark-along choruses. But Angel Du$t also write the sorts of hooks that would’ve burned up alt-rock radio 20 years ago. At times, Angel Du$t sound something like the way the Foo Fighters might sound if all the members of that band suddenly decided that they wanted to go back to making the sort of music they all grew up making.

This week, Angel Du$t will follow up their 2014 debut A.D. with the descriptively titled Rock The Fuck On Forever, a short burst of an album that packs a ton of melodic power into its 13 short tracks. It’s a supercharged blast of an album, one that never lets up even when its harmonies are soaring. It very much exists within the world of hardcore, and it’s easy to imagine what these songs will do to the crowds who will assemble when Angel Du$t head out on tour with veterans Terror and Texan crossover-thrash upstarts Power Trip this summer. But even if you don’t listen to hardcore, there’s a lot to like here. There’s plenty of power-pop and alt-rock in the way the band puts choruses together; you just have to get used to hearing songs like that played in double-time.

Below, stream Rock The Fuck On Forever.

Rock The Fuck On Forever is out 5/20 via Pop Wig.

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