Skip to content
Intensive Care Unit: Waste, Fraud, and Abuse 7” (Active-8 Records) Brand new EP from this Boston hardcore band with an all-star lineup including Ban from Boston Strangler on vocals. What you can expect here is total Boston-style hardcore with hockey-themed artwork, oi!-tinged vocals that owe more than a little to Choke, blistering polka beats, and a whopping fourteen tracks crammed onto this 7”. While Waste, Fraud, and Abuse is tailor-made to please anyone who loves it short, fast, and loud, Intensive Care Unit’s music drips with so much personality that they’ll appeal to more than just die-hard thrashers. While I got really sick of these super-fast polka beats during the Y2K thrash era, in 2026 basing your band around this type of groove feels really fresh, particularly since ICU never settles into that groove long enough for it to get monotonous, constantly switching things up with tempo changes, punches, hard stops, and other expert applications of rhythmic spice. It helps that while the songs are all very short, they’re not all built on the same template, so rather than feeling like you heard the same song fourteen times in a row, you feel more like you’ve been through a From the Cradle to the Grave-style hardcore song suite. ICU’s other big strength is Ban’s vocals, which you’re no doubt familiar with if you’ve spent any time with Boston Strangler or his more recent group Public Trust. Ban takes big swings as a vocalist, clearly enunciating his lyrics on the catchy choruses and even doing a little actual singing on tracks like “Todays Story.” You really have to put yourself out there to hit notes and write singalong parts, and you always run the risk of sounding contrived or goofy, but Ban has the magic touch. Even when he veers into the silly (like the “ooooh yeaaaaah” that ends the record), it just works. This one also boasts an excellent all analog recording and a classic looking layout… it’s the total package, so if you like hardcore, you know what to do.