We’re slap bang in the middle of a hardcore resurgence, at least in the commercial sense. The quality of music and bands hasn’t waned in the last few years, but bands like Knocked Loose, Turnstile and Speed have reached heights that few bands have gotten close to before. It isn’t even that these bands are becoming more commercial on a sonic level (with the exception of Turnstile), but the genre itself is reaching a broader audience, in part because of social media. This means that occasionally, bands will blow up, often at random because of an element of their sound or simply because they come out of the blocks roaring.
False Reality are fast becoming one of the UK’s hardcore darlings, thanks to their mix of relentless touring and hard, in your face brand of thrash infused hardcore. With guitar tones capable of starting scraps in a Buddhist retreat (all thanks to the experienced hands and brain of British hardcore veteran Dave Connolly) and the blood vessel threatening screams of Rachel Rigby, they formed in 2023 and made a fast impression. After a few well received singles and live performances, their first release Path Of Self Destruct saw a step up in both style and delivery and even featured one of the best hardcore bands in world right now, Speed, on one track.
With the band itself a blend of youth and experience, it shows in their sound. From the almost 90s two-step parts to the modern crunch and breakdowns, on paper it’s a tantalizing mix and when they announced their debut album Faded Intentions, expectations were high. Being mentioned in the same breath as fellow recent breakouts in Guilt Trip alongside spots on festivals not just hardcore focused showed that the band possess a crossover appeal too. You can see them opening up for Machine Head as much as you can headlining an alldayer in a 300 cap venue and that’s a massive part of the reason that they’ve reached their current heights in such a short time.
To put it bluntly, this is a pretty damn good modern metallic hardcore album. It ticks all of the boxes needed and it will likely give the band a platform to play bigger stages aswell as pack out some tiny low ceiling venues across the country. Tracks such as ‘Snake Eyes’ call to mind the eyeball to eyeball, spit flecked intensity of tightly packed floor shows, while ‘Worth It’ has chugs and riffs for days, cementing Connolly’s role as the MVP of the record. His blend of influences ranging from classic thrash bands like Kreator and Slayer to Arkangel makes for a ridiculous combination and means that few records released this year can go toe to toe on a riff level.
While it isn’t a bad track by any means, ‘Sonder’ disrupts a promising opening salvo of tracks with its slower pace and feels like a bit of a letdown after ‘Reality Slips’, which is one of the album’s highlights for its hefty groove and cannonball to the chest breakdown. It’s a small thing, but the pacing early on has some issues and takes you out of the groove you’ve only just found yourself in. However, things soon pick up and it’s clear that the band wrote quite a few of these tracks with the live setting in mind. You can almost see and feel the room take on more of an edge during the end of ‘Cost of Spite’ which features a ludicrously silly and heavy ending clearly designed to put innocent bystanders at risk.
No new ground is broken here, but False Reality do well to make a fantastic impression of themselves in a crowded world. It never gets too impregnable or acerbic and it knows how to have a good time without feeling too self indulgent. Rachel is a star in the making and you can almost picture her commanding big stages during her career. Some purists may scoff at the cleaner parts and cry out for a less polished and rougher sound but ultimately when the songs are this addictive, it shouldn’t matter. The blend of 80s guitar for the more metal fans and the classic hardcore sensibilities mean that this isn’t just an album for one niche, which will do the band good stead but when the time comes to pick a lane, it’s difficult to figure out which side False Reality will plant their flag into.