It didn’t take long for the title of Basement’s debut record, I Wish I Could Stay Here, to seem like something of a misnomer. Just a year after the album’s release, it was already becoming clear that the group had no intention of staying there–whether that just meant their historic port town home of Ipswich in Suffolk, England; or the relative confines of the turn-of-the-century emo sound they’d already deftly mastered. The promising young band was setting their sights somewhere else as they prepared to make their landmark sophomore album, Colourmeinkindness. The record started to carry Basement to the brink of wider success, only to find the band announcing a hiatus months before it even came out–but a decade later the album’s clear influence, and Basement’s triumphant return, are proof of Colourmeinkindness’ era-defining impact

with you in spirit, the fourth Balance and Composure LP, is an arresting, atmospheric collection of melodic post-punk and towering rock. It’s an intensely self-reflective record for vocalist and guitarist Jon Simmons, an uprooting and examination of the supports on which a life is built. Pre-emptive grief, wrestling with god and faith, familial responsibility, familial mortality—these are the things Simmons was carrying while writing this material. They’re also things he was trying, for better and worse, to avoid— hence the record’s title. with you in spirit feels like the work of songwriters reaching new heights, exploring new depths. Sometimes, the record itself feels like a band grappling with its own avoidance, its own mortality, and deciding to face these things the only way they know how. Balance and Composure are with us in spirit, yes, but in the flesh, too, for now.

“Straight up, no one is having more fun than me when we’re up there!” beams DRAIN frontman Sammy Ciaramitaro, whose face is perpetually glued in a grin. For anyone that’s seen the Santa Cruz hardcore firebrands live, there’s no mistaking that fact. Drain isn’t just a good time as Sammy presides over the chaos of stagediving bodies and mic- grabbing frontline; it’s a party—and everyone is invited. (Dolphin shorts and boogie boards are optional but encouraged.) “The vibe of it is, enthusiastic, hectic,” says the vocalist. “Five people deep singing and stagediving, then kids going berserk behind that. It’s a great vibe and I think people pick up on that.” That, in a nutshell is DRAIN. The quartet inject a serious dose of relatability—not to mention catchiness—into hardcore’s penchant for toughness and brutality on their Epitaph debut Living Proof. Ciaramitaro’s desperate, snotty howl rides roughshod over thrash-leaning riffage as rhythms bounce in a big way. If you’re picturing the Pacific Ocean waves that rise and fall along the coastal town, occasionally violently so, you’re not far off.

One Step Closer has always believed that hardcore is limitless. On All You Embrace, the band puts that theory into practice. Every release from the Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania band has seen them exploring the sonic overlaps of hardcore, emo, and '90s alternative rock without an iota of self-consciousness, or pretension, creeping into themix. "We know what we want to do with the band," says vocalist Ryan Savitski. "We're just naturally writing what feels right to us." What feels right isAll You Embrace, a collection of 11 songs that show One Step Closer reaching for something deeply honest and, as always, authentic.

Sweet Pill has a style earmarked by an earnest ingenuity that many young artists are quick to romanticize and aspire to but slow to cultivate and execute. It takes time. For singer Zayna Youssef, guitarists Jayce Williams and Sean McCall, bassist Ryan Cullen, and drummer Chris Kearney, however, their 5 years together have seen their hard work rewarded tenfold in half as long as it would take almost anyone else.

Glitterer is a band from Washington, D.C. Initially, and for some time, it was a solo project: a man and his laptop, with occasional in-studio and onstage assistance from other human beings. Four records, including two full-length albums on Anti-, were released in that one-guy period. But now Glitterer is a band: four charter members writing and recording songs and performing them at shows together, driving around the country, getting on each other’s nerves. Road cases piled in the van. Soundcheck at 5 p.m. Merch in the back. A band. You’re familiar with bands? Glitterer is one of those. They play loud melodic post-hardcore rock music that can sometimes seem simple but is always subtly weird and complex. Their new 12-song LP, Rationale, is out on Anti- .