The annual hardcore music festival Sound and Fury has come a long way since its humble beginnings back in 2006 at the now-shuttered Alpine in Ventura before working its way up to downtown Los Angeles’ 1,500-person capacity Belasco Theater (although, lore has it that the attendance numbers were much greater…,) and now growing into an outdoor summer weekend that draws in thousands of people beyond Southern California. Hardcore and heavy music fests are pretty common happenings across the country come summertime, but Sound and Fury is its own entirely distinct vibe in the way it’s always been more forward-thinking than the rest in putting together a bulletproof lineup featuring a mix of underground heroes, artists on the cusp of breaking through, and also not being afraid to bring in sounds from outside the pit.

Each year’s lineup announcement also marks the unofficial start of hardcore season — not that there’s ever been an off-season either — when, alongside warmer weather, you start seeing more touring news, new albums announcements, and the shape of the scene’s energy revving up fully. With the arrival of 2025’s first wave of artists, these pages takes a look at the State of the Hardcore Scene Address as told through the Sound and Fury lineup.

---

The Big Headline

Usually, Sound and Fury drops a lineup that is pretty deep from top to bottom (alphabetically, at that…) and there’s no real discerning way to tell who will be headlining each night. There really hasn’t seemed to be a consistent science behind that decision-making either. For example, you could have a case where in 2022, each night was capped off by Sammy Ciaramitaro in some shape or form with Saturday slotting his heavy thrashers, Drain — still riding high on the wave of their breakthrough success behind their 2020 debut, California Cursed — to close down the night, while Sunday saw him bid farewell to his experimental hardcore punk band, Gulch. One year later, the “old” CEREMONY — who weren’t even listed on the lineup — reemerged as a surprise post-headliner following Cold World’s set to perform their 2006 debut classic, Violence, Violence, from front to back.

We know the two names headlining the final set will be hardcore heavyweights, Knocked Loose, who are endlessly supporting last year’s brutally fantastic You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, and resurgent UK post-hardcore favorites, Basement, getting those honors. Both have either played or have been slated to play the fest in the past, but they weren’t nearly as big as they are now to the point where they can easily sell out sizeable venues and are very high up on other much larger rock music festival lineups. I saw each of those bands during their respective headlining tours last summer and fall, and they’re arguably at their peak superpowers. While the guesswork of who’s playing last has always been part of the fun, it at least clears up any mystery as to whether a band like them or say, Turnstile might ever return to Exposition Park someday.

---

A Change of Scene-ry

Sound and Fury lineups have always doubled as temperature check as to where the scene is at the current moment, and since the fest’s return after being put on hold due to the pandemic, the tired cliche term “hardcore-adjacent” has come to define at least half of the names on each year’s list, with the grungy melodic post-hardcore, emotively pop-punk, and heavy-gaze sounds of Anxious, One Step Closer, Angel Du$t, Anxious, Drug Church, Fiddlehead, Fleshwater, Fury, Have Heart, High Vis, Koyo, Militarie Gun, Modern Color, No Pressure, Nothing, Pity Sex, Praise, Prizehorse, Scowl, Soul Blind, and Superheaven all broadening the corners of the genre.

So far, this year has just Basement and Cloakroom as its more obvious names in that vein, but the rest of the lineup has a decidedly heavier hardcore tilt to it, with a big spotlight on barrel-chested buzzworthy acts out of the NY scene between Combust — who just released their great new album, Belly of the Beast — alongside Missing Link, Pain of Truth, and Fatal Realm showing up on the poster alongside the incredible metal blades of Mindfoce. Elsewhere, you’ve got Cali representation in the excellently named Big Ass Truck and Snuffed on Sight, the return of Forced Order and Trash Talk, and festival perennials, God’s Hate, doing their damage. International destruction is on the way from Tokyo’s KRUELTY, Thailand’s Whispers, and the UK’s DYNAMITE as well — all of this to say that the pit action going very hard and the First Aid tent going even harder all weekend long is a foregone conclusion. Is this a sign of a “trend shift” in the scene? For now, it seems like the people want violence rather that style, and I fully understand that sentiment at this moment in time.

---

Digging Deeper for the Eclectic

Along those same lines, there’s some eclectic not-at-all-hardcore stuff on the lineup as usual, but compared to the past three years where those names were pretty glaring in their ascents as critical darlings, from the experimental shoegaze of They Are Gutting a Body of Water and Hotline TNT, the noise rock of Chat Pile, the industrial electricity, the dreamier detours of Temple of Angels and Crushed, you’re going to have to dig a little deeper and do some homework this time around.

Febuary (not a misspelling) are a pretty emo-sounding collision of indie rock and screamo who released their debut album, February (spelled correctly,) last year. The aforementioned Midrift are a young NorCal band on the rise who’ve gained traction on shoegaze TikTok behind their viral track “Twin Flames” and also have a penchant for covering “27” live if you’re in need of a Title Fight fix. Memphis underground rap star, Project Pat, who is evidently beloved across the scene, gets his Sound and Fury debut, while Los Angeles synth-pop revivalists, Nuovo Testamento, will be turning the pit into an ’80s dance party once the sun goes down if things are planned right.

---

There’s Still More to Come…

Sound and Fury doesn’t show all its hand right away. The fest’s Instagram account says that of the “36 or so” names that will play this year, only 28 have been revealed, leaving 8 (or so) more names to be added in the coming months. Could we see some of those hardcore-adjacent voids being fill in once they’re revealed, or will organizers pile on even more heaviness? You could easily imagine it going either way and only improving on an already-impressive lineup, whether it’s flipping a finger to r/hardcore by booking Scowl, or satiating them with the fast-paced aggressions of Jivebomb — both who have new albums on the way later this spring and currently have their July calendars wide open. No matter how you break down the breakdown, it’s guaranteed it will be going on the year’s hardcore highlight reel

Sound and Fury will take place Saturday, July 12th and Sunday, July 13th at Los Angeles’ Exposition Park. Passes are on sale now.