With its self-titled album released in 2022, Regulate confirms that you can play New York hardcore without simply copying its codes. The band, born of the New York scene, starts from the genre’s tough, head-on tradition, yet opens it up to unexpected textures. This record, more ambitious than it first appears, aims to widen the vocabulary of hardcore without ever disowning its founding energy.
Hardcore as a starting point
The foundation stays solid and recognizable: cutting riffs, breakdowns built for bodies in motion, a rhythm section that always pushes forward. You feel the legacy of the big New York names, that way of turning music into a physical, collective, almost ritual affair. But Regulate refuses to lock itself inside the formula. The band slips in more melodic passages here and there, wider atmospheres, as if to remind us that anger can also carry shades and nuance. That dense rhythm rests on a thick bass and a precise strike that give the whole thing an unstoppable footing, an ideal base onto which the most unexpected flights come to graft themselves.
Colors from elsewhere
This is where the record becomes truly interesting. You cross paths with influences that spill beyond the strict hardcore frame: airier guitars, moments that evoke the alternative rock of the nineties, sometimes a hazy softness that contrasts with the surrounding violence. That openness could seem risky, and yet it works, because the band never loses sight of its identity. Melody does not dilute the power, it sets it in relief, offering pauses that make the following assaults even more effective.
A sometimes fragile balance
Not everything is absolutely self-evident. In trying to hold several directions at once, the album can feel like it is searching for its center, and some listeners who came for pure brutality may find the detours unnecessary. But that willingness to take risks is precisely what sets Regulate apart from the pack. The band prefers to explore rather than repeat, even at the cost of not always reaching formal perfection. That generosity of ambition deserves recognition. You sense the band still searching for the exact dose between its impulses, at times leaning toward melody, at times seized by brutality, and that trial and error, far from weakening the record, gives it the flavor of sincere exploration.
In the end, this self-titled record stands as a fine achievement, an object that speaks as much to fans of old-school hardcore as to those seeking a little more depth and color. Regulate demonstrates a real personality here, a desire to move the lines without betraying the community that raised it. It is an album of transition and affirmation at once, one that hints at a band capable of going further still. You close it with the feeling of having met a group that thinks about its music as much as it feels it, and that already counts for a great deal.
