Baltimore Hardcore

You're asking about a city, not a style. Baltimore hardcore is a small circle of players who kept swapping instruments and bands until the thing mutated — Trapped Under Ice's metallic stomp bending into Angel Du$t's power pop and Turnstile's funk.

The thread is rhythm: these bands write for bodies moving, not for pit credentials, and the same ten names keep showing up on the backs of the sleeves.

Baltimore sat in DC's shadow through the '80s — Reptile House landed on Dischord in 1986, the city's first real export. The '90s belonged to Next Step Up and a circuit of VFW halls.

The modern run starts in 2004: Dom Romeo's A389 Recordings begins pressing Pulling Teeth and allied extreme bands, Flatspot launches the same year, and Ruiner signs to Bridge Nine in 2007.

Trapped Under Ice's Secrets of the World arrives on Reaper in 2009, and the lineage branches fast: Angel Du$t forms in 2013 around Justice Tripp and Daniel Fang, Turnstile starts as a side project, and Tripp, Brendan Yates and Fang found Pop Wig Records in 2016.

By 2018 Turnstile is on Roadrunner. End It form in 2017 and hold the line for the street-level version.

Who: Justice Tripp, Brendan Yates, Daniel Fang, Pat McCrory, Akil Godsey, Dom Romeo. Rooms: the Ottobar, Sidebar, Charm City Art Space, Metro Gallery, basements in Hampden.

Kevin Bernsten's Developing Nations studio records half of it — End It cut Unpleasant Living there with Bernsten. What: mid-tempo groove over speed, breakdowns written as dance cues, vocals delivered front-and-centre rather than buried.

How a record gets in: it has to swing. End It's own description runs to thrash and soul alongside East Coast '90s hardcore — that soul element is the local tell.