In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.
April is a wrap, and here in In Defense of the Genre land, technically the biggest news of this month is probably Taylor Swift namedropping The Starting Line in a song? Assuming Swifties are now on the hunt for more great punk & emo bands to listen to, you’re in luck! I highlight 10 new songs in that realm below. But first, some recent features and reviews:
* The latest cover story in the free BrooklynVegan digital magazine is an interview with (Taylor Swift’s imminent tourmates) Paramore about going independent, becoming this year’s Record Store Day ambassadors, their love of record collecting and record stores, doing a split with David Byrne, and much more (it’s free to read in exchange for your email address)
* 10 albums that helped birth alternative rock & post-hardcore that turn 40 this year
* Mike Kinsella breaks down new Owen album The Falls of Sioux track-by-track
* Ekko Astral on how Arctic Monkeys, Charli XCX, Jeff Rosenstock & more influenced their debut LP
* Live show reviews & pics: METZ/Gouge Away, Arm’s Length/Carly Cosgrove/Saturdays At Your Place, and VIAL
* April album reviews: SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Cloud Nothings, Microwave, Oolong, Owen, Ekko Astral, Half Past Two, Kharma, Heavenly Blue, and Thrice singer Dustin Kensrue‘s new country album.
We’ve also got some new exclusive vinyl in the BV shop, including the just-announced Gel EP (violet vinyl), the new SeeYouSpaceCowboy LP (neon pink), the upcoming Story So Far LP (orange crush & black butterfly), the new Carpool LP (clear), and more. If you haven’t done so yet, you can also pick up our exclusive Alexisonfire box set, reissues & magazine and our Glassjaw box set & book.
Head below for my picks of the 10 best songs of April that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order.
RIP Eddie Leeway.
Thursday – “Application For Release From the Dream”
Thursday said they’d only release new music if they “feel it’s truly inspired and adds a new dimension to the band,” and their first song in 13 years absolutely does that. It feels like the perfect way to ease fans back in to the idea of new Thursday. The more atmospheric, art rock-leaning No Devolución found Thursday saying goodbye on a creative high note that marked a clear evolution from their early 2000s post-hardcore classics, and “Application For Release From the Dream” continues that same forward momentum that Thursday left off on 13 years ago. It’s largely in that same soaring, atmospheric realm, doubling down on the band’s evolution and never trying to capitalize on the nostalgia for when we were young. But then it’s also got a full-on screamo bridge that reminds you that this band came up playing basements, listening to stuff like Saetia and Portraits of Past before becoming MTV mainstays. In this one song alone, they capture both bookends of their initial 13-year run, and they take a step forward in the process. It sounds unmistakably Thursday, but it’s also unlike any song they’ve ever written.
Read my full track review for more.


Gel – “Mirage”
As great as Gel’s 2023 debut LP Only Constant was, their upcoming Persona EP already feels like a clear step up. It’s not a pivot to shoegaze or alt-rock or anything, but it’s a little cleaner-sounding (Jon Markson produced), a little more melodic, and they’ve got more subtle nuances worked in. Gel already mastered pure fury, and now they’re sharpening their songcraft without toning down any of the usual aggression.
We’ve got an exclusive violet vinyl variant of this EP up for pre-order.


Candy – “eXistenZ”
Candy are a hardcore band that don’t play anyone else’s rules, and their upcoming LP It’s Inside You is shaping up to be their weirdest, wildest yet. Its second single “Love Like Snow” (ft. MIRSY of Fleshwater and electronic musician mmph) is like a metal/trip-hop hybrid that leaves Candy’s usual genre behind almost entirely, and it’s actually my favorite of the two, but since it’s not really a “punk song,” here’s “eXistenZ.” It’s 81 seconds of genre-transcending hardcore fury that makes all kinds of unexpected twists and turns and rips your face off throughout its entire runtime.


Doubt – “Delusion”
Doubt hail from the hardcore hotbed of Baltimore, and their bio (penned by Soul Glo’s Pierce Jordan) cites boundary-pushing West Coast bands Trash Talk and Ceremony as core influences. You can definitely hear those vibes coming through in Doubt’s Get Better Records debut “Delusion,” a fast hardcore punk song with truly vicious screams from vocalist Claire Abila. Claire says the song is about “the aftermath of when someone has hurt you irreparably… then having to go through the process of picking up the pieces in the wake of the unjust pain that they caused,” and the way she delivers her words, that pain audibly comes through.


Bacchae – “Cooler Talk”
Like Doubt, Bacchae are also signed to Get Better Records and they’re from a similar area (DC), but they’re on a much different side of the punk spectrum. They’re a post-punk band with a big emphasis on “punk,” and their new J. Robbins-recorded single is a fired-up song that directs its anger at capitalism and the corporate world (“We give them the best parts of our days/They treat us like dogs in a comfortable cage!“).


Halo Bite – “Love Lighter”
It continues to be a great time for hardcore bands that are pushing up against the genre’s boundaries without making a drastic departure, and that’s exactly what Halo Bite are doing on “Love Lighter.” It’s groovy, catchy, and heavy all at once in a way that reminds me of stuff like the new Spaced album and pre-Glow On Turnstile. At three minutes, it’s relatively long for a hardcore song, and it gets a lot of different stuff done in that timespan.


TRSH – “Astronauts Get All the Girls”
TRSH are not a band you can pin down from just one song. Their more melodic stuff can sound like Front Bottoms vocals with Kinsella riffs, but new single “Astronauts Get All the Girls” (lol) is full-on screamo, with suspenseful build-ups and harsh-yet-tuneful shrieks. It sounds like something that could’ve come out of the early Touché/Pianos era, and it also fits perfectly alongside newer torch-carriers like Record Setter. If you like screamo at its most heart-on-sleeve and emotive, don’t let this one pass you by.
Red Sun – “ball mccartney”
If you’re new to Oklahoma City emo band Red Sun, the best song on their great new best buds EP is lead single “red SUNFO” (released in March), but in the spirit of keeping this list to songs from April, here’s the punnily-titled climactic EP closer “ball mccartney.” This is Midwest emo at its most undeniable: endless guitar noodling, a super catchy refrain that turns into a half-screamed coda, and that distinctly emo mix where it’s just as perfect for a sweaty basement show as it is for a packed 1000-cap club.
Porcupine – “Army of Martyrs”
Chicago’s Porcupine are finally gonna release their debut LP this year, and get excited ’cause the new two-song single is a whopper. A-side “Army of Martyrs” is the kind of shapeshifting, genre-transcending metallic hardcore song that warrants comparisons to bands like Converge and Portrayal of Guilt, and Porcupine do this kind of thing really, really well and make it their own. Buckle up!
Prevention – “Internalized”
The new four-song split from Anklebiter and Prevention on Sunday Drive/Delayed Gratification is a killer meeting of two great hardcore bands and two great hardcore labels, and I highly recommend giving the whole thing a listen if you’ve got five minutes and 40 seconds to spare. Anklebiter are regulars of this column, but I haven’t ever talked about Prevention before, so here’s the Springfield, IL band’s track “Internalized.” It’s just a great, classic-style hardcore song, the kinda thing that could’ve come out at just about any point in the genre’s 40+ year history and never goes out of style.
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In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more:
For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2024.
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Browse our selection of hand-picked punk vinyl.
Read past and future editions of ‘In Defense of the Genre’ here.
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Top photo: Thursday at The Chance in 2022 by Devan Gallagher. More here.