Every Record I Own - Day 848: thirdface Ministerial Cafeteria
This is one of my favorite albums of 2024.
As a teenager in the '90s, hardcore was the center of my universe. It was my "third place," my community, my peer group. I may have been born a decade too late to see bands like Minor Threat, Bad Brains, and Black Flag, but I was alive to see bands like Assück, His Hero Is Gone, Angel Hair, and Swing Kids.
I don't know if it was a matter of age or the evolution of the scene, but it was hard to stay as excited about hardcore as I grew into my twenties. Maybe I was shedding some of my teenage angst or maybe my ears just needed a little more diversity. As I wrote here five+ years ago, I don’t feel like I left hardcore, I just feel like hardcore dug in its heels and set up camp somewhere along the journey while I was ready to keep exploring, and every so often I have to run back and check in on it.
Hardcore is having a moment these days. In the '90s, a "big" hardcore show in Seattle drew 200 people. Nowadays we see bands like Turnstile and Knocked Loose play to thousands of people. I'll admit, that makes me happy. I'm stoked that the next generation has their torchbearers. But I just didn't connect with GLOW ON and You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To. Every year my musical palette expands a little bit and every year I find more of the resourcefulness, community, passion, and progressive politics that initially drew me to hardcore flourishing in other musical genres.
But then a band like thirdface comes along and I get stoked on hardcore all over again. The Nashville four-piece's sophomore album Ministerial Cafeteria is a whirlwind of powerviolence's frenzied tempos and abrupt shifts paired with old school breakneck power chord riffs and noise rock's exploratory racket. It's like if Infest, Negative Approach, and Young Widows had a baby. It's tight, well-recorded (by drummer Shibby Poole, also of the incredible Yautja), and absolutely unrelenting across its 20-minute run time. Bonus points for singer Kathryn Edwards running the awesome all ages DIY venue DRKMTTR.
I never wanted to be an old jaded hardcore kid, and thirdface helped me stave off that cynicism.
