U.K.’s Knowpeace Turn Political Hardcore Punk On Its Head With New ‘Resist’ EP

On their new EP Resist, the United Kingdom’s Knowpeace have captured our collective primal scream with the grinding metallic intensity it deserves. Their music flows outside of boundaries — just like the realities of our lives and the issues they’re packed with — and crashes to the earth with a noisy resounding thud.

Listening through the band’s latest handful of tracks, one can distinguish a number of different stylistic threads coming together ranging from energetic punk to noisy metallic hardcore that might appeal to fans of bands like Converge.

Knowpeace weave these threads into a poignant tapestry that’s all their own, illuminating their unique vantage point of the world. In their perspective, issues don’t sound easily dismissed and compartmentalized, and if we face one dose of intensity emanating from wherever, the shots just keep coming. There’s never really a sonic reprieve during the course of Resist, leaving the release feeling a bit like a snapshot of the mindset and situation its name might bring to mind.

The band don’t only serve as a vehicle for explicit sociopolitical messaging, although it is in there. In fact, they do a strikingly effective job of binding that messaging to something that’s truly musically interesting. They’re not at all just patterning themselves after politically minded punk rockers who have come before, in other words.

Instead, Knowpeace feel as though they’ve taken that punk spirit and made it a little more human and “relatable” in the confines of modern metal. For one, they’ve introduced a number of stylistic elements that continue to enjoy growth but have not exactly always been on top. In addition to the bare bones elements of their music, the band, with their all around driving sonic dynamics, introduce an urgency that’s important to their ultimate presentation and demands their music have a place. Some might take them as sonically imperfect, but Knowpeace’s songs feel like they reflect the artists behind them. You can hear and feel the passion.

5/5 Stars

Listen to some of the band’s older work below via Bandcamp. Resist releases December 31.