One thing about the members of the great Hudson Valley hardcore band Mindforce: Those guys love starting side projects. Mindforce don’t release music all that often, and they don’t tour, but they’re easily one of the best bands on the current hardcore landscape. If you factor in all their spinoff groups, Mindforce look less like a band and more like an institution. Heavy-shredding guitarist Mike Shaw, for instance, has also recently played in bands like New World Man, Sentinel, Colossus, and now motherfucking Fatal Realm.
It’s already crazy that Mike Shaw is the only guitarist in Mindforce. Almost every big hardcore band has two guitarists; Shaw holds that spot down on his own. In Fatal Realm, Shaw does all the guitars and all the vocals. The other two members are Jack Xiques and Will Kammerman, of the similarly sick Hudson Valley band Age Of Apocalyse. Together, they make brutal, chugging music that sits right on the line between heavy hardcore and death metal, and they’re great at it.
Fatal Realm’s nasty-ass five-song demo came out last year, and they’ve since played widely hailed sets at most of North America’s biggest and best hardcore fests. Today, they’re back with the new one-off track “Of No Consequence.” Imagine climbing up out of a manhole and then immediately getting decapitated by a speeding truck. This song sounds like that. Listen below.
“Of No Consequence” is out now on DAZE.
