Writhe - Self Titled

I've actually written about this release here before back in Two Thousand Fucking Sixteen! But christ this is fucking good, and it just got put on streaming sites again, so I'm writing about it again. Writhe from Hobart, Australia play fast, aggressive grindcore with powerviolence bludgeoning. It's pretty incredible, especially since it's 1-man project. With raw production, brutal riffs, glorious HM2 usage and relentless speed, this is grind stripped down to its nastiest form.

FFO:  Wormrot, Rotten Sound, Nails

Friday Night Waves

Trelkovsky - Le stesse cose ritornano

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Trelkovsky is a relatively new band from the foggy lands of northern Italy. They started playing together a couple of years ago as a duo but recently became a trio. Their style can be described as a heavily black/post-black metal influenced screamo, inspired by the likes of Deafheaven, Bosse-de-nage, Orchid, La quiete, etc. This album Le stesse cose ritornano (which translates to "The same things come back") from last September channels existential dread and life under capitalism with lyrics about identity loss, paranoia, and pain. This is chaotic, heavy, atmospheric, and unrelenting. Please do check it out.

FFO:  Jeromes Dream, Ampere, Loma Prieta, Oathbreaker, Birds in Row

 

Perikunta - Tyhjyyden vanki

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Perikunta out of Helsinki, Finland play crushing d-beat crust mixed with sludge. Tyhjyyden vanki dropped February 20, 2026 with eleven tracks of darkness - heavy, grinding, and relentless. The album mixes raw crust punk energy with slow, doomy breakdowns that hit you like a sledgehammer. Bleak, aggressive, and uncompromising.

FFO: Tragedy, Wolfbrigade, Rise And Fall 

Boycott The Baptist - Father Egg

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Boycott The Baptist from the UK deliver four tracks of grindcore/crust punk on Father Egg, released February 13th, 2026. The band has been touring relentlessly since 2013, supporting acts like Wormrot, Discharge, and Trash Talk along the way. This EP leans into their Pig Destroyer and Eyehategod love while keeping the Black Flag punk energy front and center. Tracks range from the three-minute rippers to the sprawling six-minute closer "Jane Doe In Idaho." UK grindcore that's been road-tested to hell and back.

FFO:  Wolfbrigade, Infest, Weekend Nachos

SHERM - Demo

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SHERM from Warren, Michigan unleash three tracks of grindcore on their demo, released February 13th, 2026. We got some interesting song titles here: "GRINDCORE COWBOY," "KENNY CHESNEY SONG," and "PIPE BOMB IN MY ETHIKAS." The whole thing clocks in under three minutes of crust/grindcore chaos. Michigan basement grind at its finest. Short, nasty, and ready to wreck your day.

FFO: Wormrot,  Magrudergrind, Scalp, Insect Warfare

.DotCursor - Eternal

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.DotCursor from Oakland bring the chainsaw hardcore on Eternal, released February 13, 2026. Five tracks of metallic hardcore that pull inspiration from Nails, Converge, and Entombed's buzzsaw worship. The album rips through themes of hopelessness and despair with relentless aggression - no frills, no breakdowns for the sake of it, just pure Oakland heaviness. Think bleak vocals, crushing riffs, and the kind of intensity that makes you want to flip a table. 

FFO:  Ingrown, Harm's Way, Employed To Serve, Nails

Life Pilot - Self Titled - Instrumental

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Life Pilot from Adelaide, Australia released the instrumental version of their self-titled album last month. Twelve tracks of chaotic metalcore without vocals - just heavy riffs and relentless aggression. The band has been around since 2012, building a reputation for writing heavy, angry songs and this instrumental release strips everything down to the core: the dissonant guitars, crushing rhythms, and noise metal textures that define their sound.

FFO: Coalesce, Norma Jean, Converge

Mold Bunny - (H)are you afraid of the dark?

Mold Bunny blast through 15 tracks of deathgrind/powerviolence chaos on (H)are you afraid of the dark?. The entire album clocks in under 20 minutes with rabbit and horror movie-themed track titles like "Hopmare on Elm Street" and "The Texas Rabbit Massacre." Mixing slamming death metal with grindcore intensity and powerviolence unpredictability, the band delivers brutal, relentless aggression with a tongue-in-cheek horror aesthetic.

MIND / KNOT - Mortale

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MIND/KNOT out of Rome deliver chaotic hardcore fury on Mortale. Six tracks explore mortality through distortion and sonic darkness, blending mathcore complexity with noisecore aggression. The EP rips through frantic rhythms and violent shifts, closing with the suffocating "Few Shadows Left Alone In This Void." Pure Converge/Dillinger Escape Plan worship filtered through Rome's hardcore underground.

FFO:  Botch, The Chariot, Plebeian Grandstand

NUR - Shock Mentality

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NŪR out of Haifa, Israel deliver their 1st full-length Shock Mentality via Sludgelord Records. After years playing sprawling post-metal, the band shifted hard into aggressive sludge/hardcore with blackened edges—angrier, faster, and denser than anything they've done before. Eight tracks rip through media desensitization, political decay, and societal collapse, closing with "The Line Age," the track that originally sparked this heavier direction.

FFO: Portrayal of Guilt, Gaza, KEN Mode

Plunge - Tour Demo

 

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Plunge out of Albuquerque, NM deliver five tracks of pure grindviolence chaos on Tour Demo. Released February 6, 2026, the demo alternates between sub-minute bursts of powerviolence and longer, grinding assaults that stretch past the three-minute mark. Tracks like "Unclaimed" and "Petroleum Party" explode with frustrated rage about societal collapse and manufactured narratives, while the extended cuts "Fluid" and "Violent Change" let the sludgy, noisy aggression breathe and mutate. The New Mexico hardcore scene keeps churning out brutal acts, and Plunge is raw, uncompromising, and ready to wreck eardrums.

FFO:  Big Gulp, Sex Prisoner, Full Of Hell, Wasp Mother

Desgarro - Impasibles

Desgarro out of Córdoba, Spain bring Andalusian rage to the Spanish crust scene with Impasibles. The album locks into that classic D-beat attack with apocalyptic hardcore energy, channeling the same raw disgust that fueled early Discharge and Amebix. Southern Spain doesn't get as much crust attention as A Coruña's storied scene, but Desgarro prove there's plenty of venom brewing down south—metallic riffs stripped down to their ugliest, vocals torn to shreds, and rhythms pounding like riot gear on pavement. Pure stenchcore fury.

FFO:  Wolfbrigade, Doom, Discharge, Tragedy

VerminKing - Inhumane Disruption

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VerminKing out of Bielsko-Biała play Swedish death metal with that classic buzzsaw guitar tone. Formed in 2023 from musicians in the local metal-punk scene, they recorded their full-length LP in early 2025. The album pulls straight from the Stockholm playbook—raw, grinding, and built for heads banging and mosh pits exploding rather than technical showboating. Pure worship of the Entombed/Dismember sound, complete with D-beat hardcore energy underneath all that distortion.

FFO: Entombed,  Entrails, Horrid

SWAERMMM - Γ

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SWÆRMMM out of Stockholm play experimental mathcore with grindcore and death metal thrown in. Their EP Γ (Gamma) just dropped February 6, 2026 as part 2 of a planned trilogy, ¥ (Yen) came first in 2020. Gamma is five tracks of complex, chaotic rhythms that shift constantly, blending hardcore intensity with jazz-influenced experimental detours. Saxophone and charango show up to make things weirder. Short, brutal, and unpredictable.

FFO: Pupil Slicer, Daughters, SeeYouSpaceCowboy

Sealer - Self Titled

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Sealer is a new band from Cincinnati, OH that play hardcore-adjacent noise punk with an experimental edge. Their self-titled debut dropped January 30, 2026 via The Ghost Is Clear Records, and has six songs pairing the queasy unease of noise rock with blasting hardcore. The members met as teenagers playing in different bands, then spent 20 years in projects like White Walls, RIVE, Fourth Wife, and Hissing Tiles before finally working together on this.

FFO:  Chat Pile, KEN Mode, Couch Slut

And if you're around Cincy, their record release show is April 18th 

Unyth - Fatal Exception Error

Unyth out of Charlotte play grindnoise and powerviolence with a harsh noise edge that doesn't mess around. Their new 4-track album Fatal Exception Error came out early on Bandcamp and clocks in at just under 4 minutes total—three tracks under 32 seconds and one 3-minute closer called "Faceless Hivemind." It's the same brutal noisegrind they've been doing since Scolding Visions in 2023. Short, aggressive, unpolished in the best way.

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FFO: Full Of Hell, ACxDC, Mellow Harsher

Lord Elephant - Ultra Soul

 

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Lord Elephant are an instrumental psych/stoner/doom trio out of Florence, Italy, and they've been around 2016. No vocals, no gimmicks, just three guys making heavy, sprawling rock on Heavy Psych Sounds. Ultra Soul is their second album, came out January 30th, and it has seven tracks with over 48 minutes of blues, doom, and sludge all smashed together.

FFO: Earthless, Karma to Burn, Elephant Tree 

Idyll - Voyeur

 

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Idyll are a four-piece hardcore band out of Lüdenscheid, Germany, and they've been putting out solid stuff since their first demos back in 2020. They share members with the post-hardcore band Akela from the same city. They sit somewhere in the hardcore /s creamo space, though the band themselves seem to shrug at labels. Their Instagram bio just says "probably post-hardcore." Their newest release, Voyeur, dropped in August 2025 as a five-track EP, though it just showed up on Bandcamp.

FFO:  State Faults, Massa Nera, Respire, Raein

suffer//erase - Sullen Trails

Massachusetts hardcore band suffer//erase have been quietly grinding away with a raw, no-frills sound that feels more like a basement show than a studio product. Featuring members of Boxcutter Facelift, BastardCurse, Fixture, and more, their songs are short, ugly, and direct, pulling from hardcore, d-beat, and grind without dressing any of it up. Sullen Trails dropped on January 30, 2026, and showcases a tight collection of short, pounding tracks like “Dreadful Teeth” and “Violent Mind,” serving up six blows of unfiltered hardcore chaos.

FFO: Wound Man, Year of the Knife, End, Full Of Hell 

RECVRSE - SUFFER & REMEMBER

RECVRSE are a two-piece out of Los Angeles playing hardcore/crust/skramz, and they only put out their first demo last October. SUFFER & REMEMBER is their debut LP, eight tracks dropped January 29th, and it moves fast, Politically blunt lyrics over a record that doesn't waste a second. All the money from it goes to SFV Mutual Aid, which tells you everything you need to know about where these guys are coming from.

FFO: Frail Body, Ohyda, Shin Guard

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