Remember Under The Influence: New York Hardcore? We Look At Some Of Our Recent Favs

This episode of Noisey focused around New York Hardcore and its GLOBAL influence is one of the best introductions to this genre of hardcore. Near the end of the episode, they do look around the world to showcase some bands who were majorly influenced and inspired by the grit, anger, metallic edge of the godfathers of this particular sound.

Since it was released 5 years ago, we thought it’d be cool to kind of look at what the current crop of NYHC inspired Asian hardcore bands are up to. Check out some of the bands below and get in touch with them! All sick bands with super grateful people in them…

Our current NUMBER ONE Asian hardcore band – not just NYHC inspired – is Straight Forward out of Singapore…though the band is no more, and the members have moved onto a whole bunch of other bands (most notably Zodd), it’s still this band’s full-length True Nature Of The Vice that is our go to record when people ask “What’s good in Asia?” In less than 19 minutes, Straight Forward manages to capture the essence and hardships of growing up in pressure-cooker cities like Singapore (and maybe why it speaks to us here in Hong Kong) where you’re constantly struggling to make ends meet. We love this band so much that when they announced their final show – we flew to Singapore to be there. And what a night that was.

The band did follow up this full length with their final masterpiece Prisoner of Love…yet one more in the category of essential listening.

In our experience with a lot of scenes around Asia, it’s safe to say the more metallic edge seems to be the gateway style to get people through the door in scenes who don’t have huge hardcore communities. This seems to be true in one of our favorite countries on the planet…South Korea. Of course, since those early days of seeing hardcore in South Korea back in 2000, clearly hardcore has branched out into ALL SORTS of different styles in Korea due to the decades of experience they’ve had starting bands, creating music, and thus allowing the music to breathe far beyond the sounds of classic NYHC.

However…a couple of them hardcore bands just gotta be mentioned…because they’re INSANE.

First up…is long-running hardcore act 13 Steps. Just listen.

You feel us? 13 Steps are fucking insane…but Korea doesn’t just sit back on their laurels. They keep shit moving. Check out current crop NYHC influenced hardcore band No Shelter…holy FUCK. It’s like their spitting at you right through your speakers and headphones.

Malaysia has always kept its jams heavy too. So they listened to what’s going on and told the world to hold their Teh Tarik, they’ll be right back. And with Triangle – the motherfuckers came out swinging. The band dropped this 6 track monster back in 2018 and it was off to the races.

You ready to hear how hard the right guitar riffs push you to lose your fucking mind? Indonesian hardcore band Final Attack is all about living on Riff Mountain. Check out their brand new full-length Blind Conviction released last year which was a follow up to a split with Malaysian band Triangle released in 2017. Keep in mind this is the band’s fifth full length. Haven’t heard of them? The fuck’s wrong with you?

Meanwhile, in Thailand, the bands lean more on the Merauder side of the epic heaviness of their music. Check out Ten Baht Per Hour’s most recent track…FIRE AS FUCK.

Philippines has one of the longest-running hardcore bands that has been active the entire fucking time…continuing to push on regardless of lineup changes that plague the band, through it all they don’t miss a fucking beat. Piledriver just dropped a brand new EP Constant Battles as they move into year 22 of their existence.

You think Japan’s going to watch all this and sit back twiddling their thumbs? Fuck no…enter Osaka badasses Numbernine. Check out their debut full-length Livin’ Groove below…but of course, anyone that knows the LONG history of Japanese hardcore knows that Numbernine is in no way in this NYHC-inspired Japanese hardcore camp alone – there are SO MANY killer bands doing this justice. Besides Numbernine, one of the latest bands that are FULLY BLOWING OUR MINDS is Blow Your Brains Out (hehehehe). Listen to both these records below in all their glory…

China’s like “The fuck? You forgetting the country with the most people on the planet?!” 🙂 After the demise of China’s longest-running hardcore band King Ly Chee, Beijing band Unregenerate Blood with their full on NYHC fury take on that mantel.

And of course, the true Madball-inspired heavyweights, also hailing from the mean streets of Beijing – Return The Truth:

But just for old times sake…here’s King Ly Chee outta Hong Kong [RIP]

One of the newest additions to the world of Asian hardcore has to be our homies District 105 down in Vietnam. Though the band has most recently added more nu-metal, metalcore elements to their overall sound, they originated from the more NYHC-esque camp as well. The band just dropped their debut full-length 9th…check it out below.

The mountains of Nepal were not spared from the almighty sounds of NYHC – check out Strangle on their debut EP spitting rage all over this release.

Finally, Indian hardcore band RAID have that Madball bounce and groove all over this – to the point that it sounds like Freddy and Hoya may have been called in to write some of these riffs! The band just dropped their second full-length Imperium.

This should be a good place as any to get your Asian hardcore groove on…go check these bands out, OF COURSE, THERE ARE HUNDREDS MORE, we just wanted this to be a great place to start. Either way, keep spreading the love and keep the world talking about us.

UNITE ASIA.