The kids are alright when they’re listening to the latest record from Baltimore’s Turnstile. In a world increasingly saturated with AI slop, there’s something powerful in being so authentically human that can make a record stand above the fray — especially when experienced with a live crowd. Expanding on the evolution of their sound from 2021’s “Glow On”, Turnstile don’t shy away from showing their fans how different scenes and styles can show up in their hardcore world, like how “Look Out For Me” winds down into a B’more club interlude.
Turnstile introduce their anticipated follow up to “Glow On” with its title track, a song whose similarity to the previous album’s opening track/lead single “Mystery” is so on the nose that it has be intentional. But if its placement as lead single and opening track made you think you’re in for a ride you’ve been on before, buckle up. After the comfortingly familiar album opener, “Never Enough” is loaded with musical fusions that even Turnstile’s day ones might be caught off guard by.
In April, Turnstile’s name unexpectedly appeared in vast letters on the backdrop of Charli xcx’s set at the Coachella festival. In the coming months, she suggested, “Turnstile summer” would replace her ubiquitous “Brat summer”. Hedging her bets slightly, she also suggested that 2025 would be the summer of everyone from Addison Rae and Pink Pantheress to Kali Uchis to Pulp. Nevertheless, Turnstile’s name stood out: the quintet are, at root, a hardcore punk band, a product of the fertile Baltimore scene that spawned Trapped Under Ice, Ruiner and Stout. For the most part, hardcore exists in its own world of rigid rules and codes, some distance from the mainstream: extant hardcore punk bands seldom get shouted out by huge pop stars.
“Magic Man.” A song that asks what Black Sabbath’s “Sweet Leaf” riff would sound like in Turnstile’s hands? “Slowdive.” The most pop punk Turnstile song since “Blue By You”? “Time Is Happening.” Glitched-out Turnstile with help from A.G. Cook? “Dull.” (Maybe that’s related to the Charli XCX co-sign.) A nearly-seven-minute Turnstile song with an all-timer riff,
Then again, hardcore punk bands don’t tend to receive Grammy nominations or make the US Top 30, as Turnstile have done. Meanwhile, Charli xcx’s endorsement is just another celebrity nod in the band’s direction after backing from Metallica’s James Hetfield, Judas Priest’s Rob Halford, R&B star Miguel and Demi Lovato, who described them as her favourite band. Their tipping point came with the release of 2021’s “Glow On“, on which frontman Brendan Yates moved his shouty vocal style towards singing, and the band expanded their musical remit in unexpected directions. They may be the only act in history to sound like a warp-speed hardcore band in the time-honoured tradition of Minor Threat or the Circle Jerks, and – entirely without irony or satirical intent – like the kind of glossy new-wave 80s pop to which hardcore was once ideologically opposed, on adjacent tracks of the same album.
Four years on, “Glow On’s” stylistic shifts feel like a tentative dry run for “Never Enough”. Yates has abandoned the raw-throated aspect of his vocals entirely: the album’s lyrics seem to be dealing with relationship trauma in characteristic emo style (“lost my only friend”, “it’s unfair” etc), but something about his voice and melodies now recall Police-era Sting; there’s an occasional hint of AutoTune in the mix, too. Some of the experiments Turnstile conducted on “Glow On” are repeated – the vaguely Smiths-y jangle of that album’s Underwater Boi gets another airing on “I Care“, this time around decorated with what sounds like a Syndrum; guest Dev Hynes, better known as alt-pop auteur Blood Orange, is engaged once more on “Seein’ Stars“, this time part of an impressive supporting cast that includes Paramore’s Hayley Williams, Wire star Maestro Harrell and singer-songwriter Faye Webster.
But they’re joined by deeper forays into unexpected territory. Sunshower starts at 100mph, clatters to a halt, then reboots as a wall of proggy synthesiser and a lengthy flute solo, courtesy of Shabaka Hutchings. Dreaming has a curious, vaguely Latin American rhythmic slant, and horns courtesy members of jazzy funk band BadBadNotGood. Dull, meanwhile, melds beefy nu-metal inspired choruses to glitchy electronic verses, the latter presumably the work of “additional producer” and xcx affiliate AG Cook. Elsewhere, there is neon-hued pop punk bathed in a dreamy swirl of echo (Time Is Happening), riffs borrowed from Black Sabbath (Sweet Leaf, to be specific, on Slowdive), distinctly U2-esque guitar solos and divebombing dubstep bass “Never Enough”.
The Fat Angel Sings 