Photo by Vincent Arbelet

“’If I Speak’ is a song about channeling one’s voice and perspective through art or another creative expression,” says Pierce Jordan of SOUL GLO’s new single. “You can hear when people spend more time online than on their music. You can tell when people are more focused on a visual statement than a sound.” It’s interesting to hear more artists finally speaking out against midness in music-making lately, because we really are entrapped in a very beige color palette at the moment, especially when it concerns the modern current of more fashionable forms of indie-adjacent rock. The Philadelphia hardcore-punk band has never been in danger of falling into predictability or boring the senses thankfully, and their first new music since releasing last year’s best album, Diaspora Problems, is by extension Molotov-rattled stylistically with a doomy preface before thrashing with a rage that has no speed limit or red light in sight. Unless, of course, you count the expletive-laced dunk session Jordan delivers to online aesthetics over everything. “Every day some new lil dick, typing away, taking the piss / I know them fingers gotta hurt, I can hear it in the riffs.” The truth hurts, or in SOUL GLO’s case, brutalizes.

SOUL GLO’s “If I Speak (Shut the Fuck Up)” single is available now on Epitaph Records.