*Note from dear friend Pascal: I recommend listening to the album as you read the review (link to Spotify album at the bottom of the page).
Incendiary fell onto my radar via the Spotify rabbit hole. If anyone reading this is unclear what I am speaking of it goes like this: You are at the gym, trying to decide what to put on, you throw on a go-to album, something solid and familiar. You decide you want something else and thus the navigation down the deep well of music begins. It starts by scrolling to the bottom of a band’s Spotify page to look at the “Fans also like” section. The endless discovery commences until you come across something that makes your jaw drop.
I keep a running list of bands to check out in my notes section on my phone. It’s broken up into four sections: Chill, alternative, hardcore and the likes, and hip-hop. If something falls on my radar, I make note of the band by adding them to the list, for later consumption. Needless to say, Long Island, New York-based hardcore band, Incendiary, is on that list, followed by five asterisks (my starring system).
Incendiary was formed in 2008, with the release of the 7-inch EP, Amongst the Filth. This five-piece hardcore ensemble is made up of Brendan Garrone (vocalist), Matt McNally (bass), Rob Nobile (guitar), Briand Audley (guitar), and Dan Lomeli (drums). In May of 2023, the band unleashed their fourth full-length studio album, Change the Way You Think About Pain, a ten-track, powerfully charged hardcore album pulling from a wonderful portfolio of influence across the hardcore genre. This album navigates the many topics of our current socio-political environment while touching upon the strife of navigating the individual mind. Vocalist, Garrone, gives the ear encouraging words to awaken the listener’s awareness of mindset while shining a spotlight on issues that continue to sweep through our society (which should not be ignored). Change the Way You Think About Pain, gives a stark mixture of realism, but also sprinkles in encouraging words filled with positive intent, mostly centered around themes of acceptance and harnessing power to put our individual focus on our mindsets to make for a better future. This album ultimately provides the listener hope for the future while not ignoring the reality of our current existence.
Hardcore music has a deep history, rooted in artists expressing voices steeped in political commentary, as well as focusing the lens on more positive means of living, a mix of realism and hope. An understanding of the way things are, while casting a spotlight on the way things can be. The positivity of hardcore is intriguing. It’s surprising that its popularity isn’t as wide-reaching as it should be, given our current focus as a society–contrary to what the media is feeding us–to move toward more positive modalities of living. Not all hardcore is created equal, some focuses on darker themes or more aggressive tones, but the focus on the bands that do decide the route of the positive message should not be overlooked. Rather, it should be held up high and used as a platform to invoke awareness in the masses.
Change the Way You Think About Pain, pulls influences from many bands that fan out from the rivets of the genre. It would be a shock that if anyone listening to this album and who grew up in the nineties listening to even a sliver of a similar genre of music–or who didn’t live under a rock for that matter–would be remise in the connection in Garrone’s vocal style to that of Rage Against the Machine and Inside Out’s vocalist, Zack de la Rocha. Garrone’s sound, cadence, and general lyrical theme, match very closely to de la Rocha’s. This is high praise, as Rage Against the Machine was integral to the socio-political commentary of the 1990s and early 2000s. The first mainstream band in my eyes who was able to secure a stage with an enormous crowd spread amongst them and who spread a message in the manner they did. They were the first mainstream band (with an enormous draw) to mix a hardcore punk/rock style sound with hip-hop, and they never failed to use their platform to spread awareness of our society’s issues of inequality, and they did so with a voice centered around the anti-authoritarian and pushed strongly for revolution. I am greatly reminded of all of this when I hear Incendiary, Change the Way You Think About Pain, as well as the bands earlier works.
The band’s socio-political theme is evident on the album’s third track, Echo of Nothing, in which Garrone seemingly highlights the struggles being endured in the Eastern world. Ongoing slavery, pilgrimage, and risking life in hopes of fleeing harsh regime’s, all while Western cultures sit in their lush and comfortable environment, ignoring the pleas and turmoil of other struggling countries and cultures. Garrone’s poetic tone grabs our attention when he says, “It’s their desperation, the risk they take/To flee the terror of the failing state/Endangered life for just a little taste/Of freedom, relief, and a sense of place.” It gets thrown into our awareness immediately; the struggles of mankind, individuals push for freedom, a harsh quest to live a comfortable life, and human liberties. The song goes on to further highlight America’s ignorance, its hubristic approach to living, it’s way of going about life by creating separation because of arbitrary lines in the sand that have been created to outline our borders and not offer assistance because one country’s flag doesn’t match the others. Garrone belts, “All quiet on the western front/While they cry for help in the eastern mud/Refusing the calls to deliver aid/’Cause the waving flag is a different shade.” It’s a reminder of this odd environment we live in where we’ve built a hard wall that says, not my issue, not my problem. The divide we have experienced and the narrative of those who can’t understand how the system has failed, which has resulted in human demonstration and protesting, becomes evident in Echo of Nothing’s closing line, “When the well dries up/The bread has turned to crumbs/They’ll look down at the streets/And use the stones to speak.” The song ends with an eye-opening, thought-inducing line, which is repeated, “Every window deserves a brick.” Here is where I am most reminded of the past awareness that Rage Against the Machine brought forward, the use of a strong voice with a warning to the people that violence will follow if you mistreat people of a certain class or culture long enough. If this ending doesn’t give you goosebumps, I suppose your viewpoint and heart for mankind may be elsewhere.
When listening to an album, it can’t go unnoticed the order of the songs, especially the opening and closing tracks. Change the Way You Think About Pain’s opening track, Bite the Hook, wastes no time by casting a heavy net over the listener’s ears. The track is punctuated by hard kicks and cymbal chokes to go alongside the attention-grabbing guitar sound. Ears perk immediately. Instantly, we are graced with abrupt vocals, grooving drumbeats sprinkled with double kick flares, and cooperative guitars. One guitar is riding higher-end chord progressions while the other covers us in open notes interspersed with chugs and single-string double picking to match the intertwining double-kick segments. In the song’s chorus, Garrone gives us a reminder of the challenges of life and the positivity of the mind by focusing on the personal actions that need to be taken in order to navigate life on a higher level. He says, “It never stops or goes away/I rip the weeds from my garden every day.” While the following is shouted under the familiar hardcore-style gang vocals, “Infected roots/Bare poison fruits.”
To skip ahead–since the subject of the opening and closing tracks have been broached–the album’s closer, Change the Way You Think About Pain, offers a wonderful bookend to a twenty-nine minute and fifty-six-second must-have piece of art for any lover of hardcore music. As it pertains to musical style, this track specifically pulls us back into the late 1990s/early 2000s era of hardcore; high-end augmented guitars, blasting around the world build up tom beats and upbeat kick and high-hat flares, kin to vulture beats, reminiscent of bands like Misery Signals, The Hope Conspiracy, and Poison the Well–to name a few. Garrone’s opening line offers a reminder to the listener of personal responsibility, saying, “Are you gonna save yourself?” Setting the stage for the coming chorus orchestrated as a breakdown with a strong hip-hop influence, which meets our ears at the fifty-four-second mark: “Repeat the lies that you’re telling yourself to live/Yeah, I’m wise to the game/The books say it’s a mindset/But your mind’s set the same.” This line could easily melt into nothingness if it weren’t for Garrone’s attention-grabbing cadence and punctuation of words, which go hand in hand with Nobile and Audley’s perfectly executed chord progression, and Lomeli’s flawless groove matched by McNally’s punching bass. The song picks up before moving into a brief tom breakdown, launching back into the chorus and eventually transitioning into a hardcore anthem build-up mixed with layered vocals alternating between the words “Are you gonna save yourself?/Change/Change the way you think about pain.” As the track fades out to a lingering guitar feedback blanket by a chorus-style reverb effect, fulfillment washes over the body and energy flows through, there is a desire to pass the message on to anyone that will accept it.
Incendiary is no doubt playing a major role in the evolution and possibly ongoing awareness of hardcore music. It’s a much-needed album given our times and it’s a breath of fresh air to hear people using their voices for positivity and social awareness through the artful conduit of music.
Change the Way You Think About Pain, pulls from many of the various influences that fall under the umbrella of hardcore. As I listen, this album calls to memory the following bands: Earth Crisis, Misery Signals, Vision of Disorder, Rage Against the Machine, Strife, Indecision, Glassjaw, The Hope Conspiracy, and Turmoil. The range is wide, from musical style to lyrical style and content, with brief portions where the guitar effects stack, such as Rats in the Cellar (reminders of Glassjaw). The listener is reminded of the many influential bands in the genre, from a style standpoint; Change the Way You Think About Pain (reminders of Indecision and Vision of Disorder), Host/Parasite (reminders of Earth Crisis), and C.T.E and Collision (reminders of Misery Signals). No doubt, the list can go on and on, but for the sake of brevity and a narrow focus, let’s leave it here.
Hardcore music has changed my life (see prior post on the power of Have Heart’s powerful album, The Things We Carry). It’s allowed me to adopt more positive mindsets and has given awareness to deeper issues that run through society. It’s pulled me through challenging times in my own life, it’s given me hope for better days ahead, it helped me develop a stronger sense of self and helped me on the path toward radical acceptance. Issues in society become skewed and agendas hidden because of the deceptive lens of media, which plagues our current society–and historical one. This is where the power of music steps into the story of cultural and societal shifts, and it has for many years, but in my opinion, it’s taken the back seat for some time. In the mainstream anyways (hardcore bands have been at it for years). It’s time for it to rise up again, to be used as more of a sounding board. While people are being fed and consuming mainstream media (this also involves music), it’s a breath of fresh air to hear this art of hardcore and message come forth from Incendiary.
Change the Way You Think About Pain is a phenomenal album. One which should be on rotation for anyone who is a lover of the genre or frankly, anyone who is looking to expand their horizon and deepen their thoughts on the processes of life. Every aspect of this album is great. Don’t overlook it.
We love music over here at the RDT Headquarters, and this album gets our hard (and positive and thought provoking) stamp of approval. Go check it out!