The Omnipresence of Audio
And so, “Listening Habits Volume #8” – the new frontier. Well, not really or in fact at all. Welcome to a new series emanating from the reanimated Ear Nutrition. A collection of words pertaining to the human ability to create art by banging, picking and plucking various objects in sequence to form a coherent whole.
The modus operandi of this series is to celebrate the very nature of these sounds. From the legacy of the old onward to the fluidic, undulating nature of the contemporary and finally, to the frequent flashes of the emergent, all in reverence to the functional and irrevocable symbiosis of the three.
Succinctly put. The new, the old and the somewhere-in-between, communicated in written form whenever I can be bothered, as experienced by my very own lug’oles in effort to counter the mundanity-derived cognitive atrophy I’ve experienced since bining this off!
True Fight – Reason To Believe
January 2020
Hardcore Punk / Youth Crew
Three words: Japanese Straight Edge.
I remember the first time I heard this release. I was amidst, enrolled in, and ardously taking part in the mundanity that is running the errands I need to traverse in order to exist, and a friend’s suggestion reappeared from within my innately disadvantaged Hippocampus: True Fight, Japanese Hardcore.
What followed was a solid two hours of said mundanity being involuntarily subject to an adrenalised obliteration, only to be rendered into nothing but barely atomised smithereens prior to onwardly and expeditiously finding itself extricated from existence. Reason To Believe gave me very much that, a seemingly inexhaustible, audibly intravenous drip into an ear canal hopelessly in need of rejuvenation.
And that is exactly where this album stays. On those days where everything is a bit much or where “the grind” seeks to impress upon me its undeserved hegemony over the day-to-day, when I need the impetus to simply carry on – often literally – just to get through the day or to keep some semblance of positive mental attitude alive.
“Youth Crew” revival may be abundant as it stands within the greater Hardcore scene, but when it’s done “right” you just know. The band have continued to release music across their bandcamp (including a vintage Pennywise cover) and through streaming services since Reason To Believe. Don’t waste any time; now, off you go.
In Evil Hour – Endure
June 2026
Melodic Hardcore / Punk-Rock
Ferocious, pertinent, impassioned, poignant and informed. Articulate, intelligent and cerebrally eviscerating to the beholder – on Endure, In Evil Hour prove, unequivocally, their ability to deliver precision to the proverbial nail’s head. However, such a salient impact is itself twofold and actualised in real time beyond the band’s description, as with each impact, “we” the “smartest” of the Earth’s children, expedite the nail’s point perniciously, driving it deeper and embedding it further, fastening a coffin not so proverbial and definitely our own.
Occupying my listening habits physically as much as on the move, Endure, I have come to realise, is the answer I would give to anyone pondering our timeline and the abject spiral it has taken at humanity’s wilfully incredulous complacency. The band approach our existential quandary markedly and explicitly, drawing from a range of examples with such a seamless ease that one can’t help but feel despondent prior to the realisation that knowledge is power and often the progenitor – so to speak – of motivation.
As for the delivery, the four-piece dance around their previous apex before committing it to archive. An amalgamation of their historically resolute backbone of sharp and grounded yet melodious Hardcore is rendered via the experience gleaned from their evocative forays into more Melodic Punk-Rock, seeing In Evil Hour hybridise to their very best; for now, that is.
Long live this band.
Cronos Debe Morir – Adagios Hacia una Utopía
April 2025
Skate Punk
Cronos must die, apparently, with discussion and adages of Utopian discussion amidst and concurrent – or something like that. My own Spanish isn’t the best, but even so, I’m sure that those whose talent for language is more adept or better still, those for whom the Iberian Romance language is their first tongue, will concur that the sheer force of this album is indisputably efficacious in its delivery and the adrenalised emotional resonance felt from start to finish – and repeat.
Adagios Hacia una Utopía itself came together from the band’s first two EPs, reworked and unified in a way that presents the band as the whole these songs were always destined to represent. Rapido, unrelenting, soulful and melodious to the nines, Cronos Debe Morir commands a technical and theatrically metallic melodic Skate Punk sound that equates to a jolting, catalytic pulse of energy album-wide, with any relative reduction in pace set only to wind the engine toward furthering their ballistic directive.
Somewhat thematically, in this latest iteration of Listening Habits, this album is yet another employed in the service of my hearing when expediency, obligatory or not, is the name of the game and enthusiasm and motivation are seldom available. Trust me, with Adagios Hacia una Utopía being the battle cry of a record that it is, you will get everywhere fast.
I had great difficulty deciding on a track to embed without waylaying myself with donning my existential chainmail, so I chose numero uno.
And what an introduction it is.
War On Women – Time Under Tension
May 2026
Punk-Rock / Hardcore Punk / Post-Hardcore
2026 has seen the veritable trove that is the spectrum of Punk-Rock music swell beyond previous abundance, and within that, I would argue that War On Women’s Time Under Tension is an integral and alluring bounty to be found within this hoard of hordes.
Though War On Women are admittedly a band that I am regretfully a non-expert on – though a rectification of that is now definitely due – prior to May 2026, I found myself ear-canal-micro-moshing to their en-point salvos multiple times. Then came Time Under Tension; however, entering a chronology of work objectively difficult to surmount.
Somewhere between Punk-Rock, Hardcore and now on this release – aided by such fitting production – pushing towards the resident hyper-plasticity of Post-Hardcore, the band’s sound is once again everything that previously officiated its annexation of your ability to interpret sound. This time, however, their warrant extends its reach quite indomitably beyond its previous remit. Venomous, adversarial, and yet emphatically human and vulnerable, Time Under Tension is a venerable tirade against personal tribulations as much as it is vehemently combative and articulate against instigators of woe, discord, regression and pertinently, oppression.
It is fortunate, then, for myself and many that War On Women finally made it to Punk Rock Holiday recently, where I should think they were more than just a highlight for those in attendance, especially as a number of these songs were belted out in their own right, interspersed between the classics. I don’t think I stopped smiling, if I’m to be honest. Perhaps most notably so when oddly entitled stage-urchins finally moved on at the most apt of moments during their set.
If you saw it, you saw it, but regardless, this band are fucking brilliant.
Speedway – A Life’s Refrain
April 2025
Hardcore Punk / Youth Crew
Speedway, a band whose moniker is often, but definitively in this case, an aptronym embodying the role of the great reanimator and artificer of motivation when I need it, are now fulfilling that very function as I earnestly endeavour to get these words down before my cerebral cortex capitulates. ‘Listening Habits Volume 8’ then, beginning and now ending with Youth Crew, itself the metaphorical Punk-Rock tonic you just fucking need sometimes, is epitomised by this record. On yet another personal note, shock, A Life’s Refrain is another I utilise to motivate the lateral thinking needed to obliterate the prohibitory and inhibitory obstacles that beset the medicinal PMA I so crave.
If that isn’t what the contemporary wave of such a revival of this timeless epoch of Hardcore is for, then I’ll chow down on my ceaseless internal monologue post-haste. Though that may take a while…
Digression aside, twelve tracks and twenty minutes of bank-bursting ferocity render any possible comment pertaining to stylistic over-saturation null, void and irrelevant. A band fastidiously blasting the music they wish to play is evident from the relative alpha and onward to the finality of the omega of A Life’s Refrain. Angular, fast and imbibed to the ‘core with an infectious gusto, Speedway’s impetuous pace is cut with a precision arrangement of wild, classicist-virtuoso leads and authoritative down-tempo refrains that assist in maintaining your verticality despite such self-sustaining power battering you to and fro from bout to beckoning bout.
‘So for now, and for what it’s worth
What lies ahead are the lessons I’ll learn
So salt the earth in this garden of pain
My steps will pave way for better days
In time I’ll learn to see clear
I’ll live beyond my fears’
That’s enough word vomit for now.
*Laptop drop*
Whoops.
