Meet Vein, the group on a mission to push hardcore forward

a shot of vein live — Vein open up new territories

After a burst of classic, cult bands moulded something new and unique out of hardcore in the early part of the 21st century, its progress undeniably stalled in the intervening years. But suddenly, in the last year or so, hardcore has begun to stir again in a big way.

“I think that music goes in waves,” says Vein vocalist Anthony. “It really feels like people are ready to hear things that are trying to push the boundaries of heavy music again. We’d love to be considered part of that whole movement.”

If Vein don’t join the ranks of Code Orange, Oathbreaker, Venom Prison, Employed To Serve and many other stunning bands currently redefining heavy music, then there is something drastically wrong. Last year’s split EP with .Gif From God is less than five minutes long, but produces more ideas in that time than the entire careers of many modern hardcore bands, and if Anthony is to be believed, then it’s only the start.

“The EP is just a snapshot of what we can do,” he explains. “We wanted to have all the ideas and turns of pace in there very quickly, but it had to have good songs. When you hear the full-length, it will show many more flavours to what we can do. We want to progress as far as the bands that influenced us did.

“Our last band didn’t really have the scope to cover the sort of Botch, Converge sound that we wanted to incorporate,” Anthony continues. “So we decided to start this band so that we could experiment with those sounds. We don’t want to sound exactly like those bands, and I think that we do bring our own flavour and identity to this music, but that was such an exciting time for music that we really wanted to take influence from it.”

Anthony believes that Vein and their class of 2017 won’t just be matching the likes of Converge and Dillinger in the records they release, but in the legacy they leave.

“This group of bands will be the next group that people remember,” he declares. “I really believe that. I think that we can all be part of something really special.”

Sounds Like: The greatest hits of Hydra Head Records being played 10 times as fast.

For fans of: Converge, Burnt By The Sun, Code Orange

Listen to: While You Weren’t Caring

Vein’s full-length debut album will land later this year

Why new Code Orange album Forever is one of the most important releases of 2017

Stephen joined the Louder team as a co-host of the Metal Hammer Podcast in late 2011, eventually becoming a regular contributor to the magazine. He has since written hundreds of articles for Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Louder, specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal. He also presents the Trve. Cvlt. Pop! podcast with Gaz Jones and makes regular appearances on the Bangers And Most podcast.