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Hardcore from Philadelphia featuring 3/4 of Quarantine.
Our take: Maximally fast, loud, and mean music from this Philly crew on their debut release. If it sounds familiar, that’s because 3/4 of the members were in Quarantine, with Daniel from Kinetic Orbital Strike and Dark Thoughts being the recent addition to the lineup on drums. Somehow the Damage ratchets up the intensity even more from their previous band, which I would have hardly thought possible until I heard it. The Damage plays like they have something to prove, pushing their sound to the absolute breaking point in terms of speed, heaviness, and downright meanness. The first three tracks are just ridiculously fast, blazing along at Jerry’s Kids-esque tempos that are so impressive in their own right that it takes a few listens for it to sink in how dense and hooky the songs are. When the Damage finally takes the pedal off the floor for the final stomper, “Why Try,” it feels like a mid-paced song in context, but it’s actually faster than a lot of “fast hardcore” bands’ fastest songs. Imagine standing in an open space with 25 pitching machines assembled in a circle around you, all hurling 90-mile-per-hour fastballs constantly, from every direction, for six minutes. That’s what listening to this demo feels like.