In Defense of the Genre is a column on BrooklynVegan about punk, pop punk, emo, hardcore, post-hardcore, ska-punk, and more, including and often especially the bands and albums and subgenres that weren’t always taken so seriously.
May is a wrap, summer is basically here, and that means it’s time to recap the month in punk. I highlight 10 new songs that I recommend below, but first, here are some features we ran this past month:
* 10 Crucial Emo Albums Turning 10 in 2025
* 5 influences on Home Is Where‘s country-leaning album Hunting Season
* Arm’s Length on how The Hotelier, Phoebe Bridgers, Bon Iver, Hot Mulligan & more influenced their new LP
* Pelican discuss 10 albums that influenced their new LP Flickering Resonance
* PUP discuss 11 influences on new album Who Will Look After the Dogs?
* May album reviews: Home Is Where, Arm’s Length, The Callous Daoboys, MSPAINT, PUP, Charmer, Mclusky, Club Night, Xiao, fallfiftyfeet, Emma Goldman, Model/Actriz, Catbite, Full of Hell, and John Galm (of Snowing).
Some new exclusive vinyl we recently launched includes the upcoming albums from La Dispute (tri-color) and Rise Against (translucent orange); the new 20th anniversary edition of Minus The Bear’s Menos El Oso (coke bottle green); new pressings of The Offspring’s Americana (red smoke), NOFX’s White Trash, Two Heebs and a Bean (candyland), American Football’s LP2 (tri-color twister), Northstar’s Is This Thing Loaded? (various color); and more.
Head below for my picks of the 10 best songs of May that fall somewhere under the punk umbrella, in no particular order.
Maruja – “Look Down On Us”
The verses and bridge to UK band Maruja’s new single “Look Down On Us” read like an impassioned speech that takes aim at our current age of oligarchy, and the refrain is one of the most simple-yet-effective protest punk slogans this side of “Do They Owe Us A Living?”: “They look down on us.” Unlike that 84-second Crass classic, Maruja stretch their message out over a period of 10 minutes, with a sax-fueled punk-jazz backdrop that sounds like a cross between Swans and Fun House-era Stooges. It distills everything great about Maruja’s recent string of EPs into something greater than the sum of its parts, and it’s a great way to set the stage for their upcoming debut album Pain to Power.
Boneflower – “Pomegranate” (ft. Touché Amoré’s Jeremy Bolm)
Since releasing their excellent 2020 sophomore album Armour, Madrid’s Boneflower picked up a co-sign from Touché Amoré vocalist Jeremy Bolm, who included them on his 2023 screamo compilation Balladeers, Redefined, and now Jeremy lends his voice to the first single off the band’s Deathwish debut, Reveries. It’s a pairing that couldn’t be more perfect; like Touché Amoré themselves, Boneflower make rich, atmospheric screamo and post-hardcore that’s equal parts heavy/beautiful and aggressive/melodic. Jeremy’s voice fits in seamlessly, and if his involvement helps turn “Pomegranate” into Boneflower’s breakthrough song, that’ll be well deserved. It instantly feels like one of their best yet.
The Armed – “Well Made Play”
The Armed are heavy again! After gradually going in a poppier direction that peaked with 2023’s Perfect Saviors, “Well Made Play” finds The Armed returning to vicious metallic hardcore in a way that they really haven’t done since their 2015 album Untitled. (It’s also the second song on this list to have skronky punk-jazz sax.) Yet “Well Made Play” doesn’t feel like a return to form, more like a new approach to something The Armed have had in their back pockets the whole time. No idea if it’s indicative of what we should expect from the rest of their upcoming album The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed, but needless to say I’m excited to find out.
Kerosene Heights – “Waste My Time”
I promise that one day I will stop comparing Kerosene Heights to You Blew It! in reviews, but today is not that day. Even more so than the songs on their recent split with Swiss Army Wife did, Kerosene Heights’ debut SideOneDummy single “Waste My Time” reminds me of the jump that You Blew It! made from Grow Up, Dude to Keep Doing What You’re Doing, during which they turned their scrappy Midwest-style emo revival into something cleaner, punchier, and better suited for the increasingly-large rooms they were playing. In the 11 years since, I haven’t heard many bands do that to as great an effect as Kerosene Heights do on “Waste My Time.” It has all the noodly signifiers of the ’90s Polyvinyl/Jade Tree era, but this is far too catchy to stay put in the DIY emo underground.
Sport – “Are You There?”
Speaking of emo revival’s class of 2014, last year I looked back on some of my favorite emo albums of that year for their 10th anniversaries, and one was Bon Voyage by the Lyon, France band Sport. It’s one of the best albums of its genre/era, and after it came out, Sport released just one more album in 2016 (Slow) before breaking up in 2019. But now they’re back, with a new album called In Waves arriving on June 21, and new single “Are You There?” sounds as refreshing and nostalgia-inducing as Sport did a decade ago. The math rock-kissed guitars sound like a cross between Minus The Bear and American Football, and Sport also have a grittier, punkier side that brings to mind stuff like Braid and ’90s Hot Water Music. They don’t shy away from easy-to-make surface-level comparisons, but what always set Sport apart from their peers were their gorgeous, thoughtful melodies and “Are You There?” has those in spades.
The World Is a Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid to Die – “Beware the Centrist”
Last year, The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die released a cover of Ceremony’s 2006 hardcore classic “Kersed,” and now the post-rock/emo collective have released a hardcore song of their own, “Beware the Centrist.” Vocals are split between guitarist Anthony Gesa (who sang lead on the Ceremony cover), keyboardist Katie Dvorak, and TWIABP’s usual lead vocalist David F. Bello, and it comes as a reminder that TWIABP grew out of the same Connecticut hardcore scene that birthed bands like Palehorse and With Honor. It’s not just a genre exercise though; they find ways to make it distinctly TWIABPian. And not that TWIABP haven’t written bluntly political songs in the past, but there’s no denying that the fired-up message is perfect for a moshy rager like this one.
La Dispute – “Autofiction Detail”
Of the three songs that La Dispute released from their upcoming album No One Was Driving The Car, opening track “I Shaved My Head” is the proper lead single (it has a video), but my favorite one so far is “Autofiction Detail.” It explores the post-hardcore band’s softer, slower side, with vocalist Jordan Dreyer using a quieter singing voice for long stretches of the song, and it doesn’t really start exploding until around the 2-minute mark. As great as their more immediate songs are, La Dispute are often at their best when they take their time the way they do on this one.
Pick up our exclusive tri-color vinyl variant of the new La Dispute album.
Pupil Slicer – “Heather”
Pupil Slicer’s excellent 2023 album Blossom had its brutally-heavy moments, but it also often favored a more melodic, atmospheric approach and toned down some of the mathcore fury of their 2021 debut LP Mirrors. That fury is back in full force and cut with a sassy dance-punk undercurrent on “Heather,” a song that singer/guitarist Kate Davies says is about “the unique experience of your existence being used as a political tool and your rights cast aside for the goals of others.”
Pretty Bitter – “Thrill Eater”
Pretty Bitter hail from the DC DIY scene and share members with Ekko Astral, and as much as you can hear the sharpened grit of DIY coming through on “Thrill Eater,” you can also hear how the song’s clean, jangly guitars (and banjo) and Mel Bleker’s soaring voice have gained Pretty Bitter comparisons to The Cranberries and 10,000 Maniacs. It’s the first taste of their Tiny Engines debut Pleaser–co-produced by Into It. Over It.’s Evan Weiss and Strawberry Boy’s Simon Small–and this song alone already feels like a big step forward from their previous LP Hinges.
Cryptodira – “The Same River Twice”
Back in 2020, when the metalcore revival was picking up steam, I suggested that if you want a new band that carries on the tech-y, proggy metalcore spirit of early Between the Buried and Me and Dillinger Escape Plan, you want Cryptodira, who released their sophomore LP The Angel of History that year. They since put out a couple singles and did a couple tours (including one with BTBAM), and now they’ve finally got a new EP coming out: Genesis Of Error, due 7/25 via Silent Pendulum. First single “The Same River Twice” is an under-two-minute frenzy that’s cut from that same BTBAM/DEP cloth, with a little Converge in there too, especially in its speed and brevity. The metalcore revival has gone in a whole bunch of different directions over the years, but it feels like it’s been a minute since we’ve gotten this type of chaos–or at least this type of chaos done this well.
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In an effort to cover as many bands as possible, I try to just do one single per album cycle in these monthly roundups, so catch up on previous months’ lists for even more:
For even more new songs, listen below or subscribe to our playlist of punk/emo/hardcore/etc songs of 2025.
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Read past and future editions of ‘In Defense of the Genre’ here.
Browse our selection of hand-picked punk vinyl.
