Hope Collapse put out an EP in 2005 called Year of the Leper and then nothing at all. Age of Heathens, their debut album, arrives tomorrow through Black Claw Records, twenty one years later.
The people involved explain the gap and the sound at once. Carlos Ramirez sings, Andrew Orlando plays guitar, Jeff Kaplan of Two Man Advantage and The Judas Iscariot is on bass, and Anthony Corallo of Sheer Terror and Kill Your Idols drums. These are men who were in the room when New York hardcore and grindcore were the same scene.
"Andrew and I are both lifelong Voivod nerds," Ramirez says, "so even when we're trying to write something straightforward, some weird riff or unexpected turn usually sneaks its way in." The record otherwise leans into the grindcore side of nineties hardcore, the territory of Integrity, Rorschach and early Converge.
The words are plainer than the riffs. "Age of Heathens is probably the most direct record I've ever written," he says. It is about people being exploited and pushed around by whoever holds the power, with songs on PTSD, inner city public schools and religious hypocrisy.