If you haven’t been paying attention to Ohio’s hardcore scene lately, you’ve missed a wave of excellent bands coming out of Columbus.
In the past two to three years, the hardcore scene has exploded in size, and with this growth has come a crop of new bands.
Among the cream of that crop is Ungrounded, a 5-piece power violence project.
I heard about Ungrounded from 3 former bandmates who started the band late last year and performed their first set in April. Since then their sound has evolved by leaps and bounds, resulting in an absolute ripper first release.
Sonically, their sound flows downstream of older bands such as Capitalist Casualties and Spazz, while also drawing from more recent power violence bands such as Forest Fucker (also from Columbus).
What makes Ungrounded stand apart from other acts of their ilk is that the songs are quite catchy and memorable. At no point in the EP do the tracks blend together, or devolve into unparsable static.
Beyond just being memorable instrumentally, the lyrics and vocals are solid, with lines such as “American Dream, you know what I mean, my money’s like Lake Erie, filthy and green” being delivered with a staticky fury.
For myself, the mark of good hardcore isn’t a band's recorded material, with the live set a band puts on being just as, if not more, important. I caught Ungrounded in late October, right before their EP dropped.
Their live set was fast, chaotic, and loud, with plenty of crowd participation. The songs got everyone moving, and the vocalist(Jackie) had a great stage presence. The set was everything one would expect from a power violence band in a sweaty, overly cramped basement and so much more.
Get It
- Bandcamp (digital)
Tagged: ungrounded
