San Jose hardcore moves fast. Two thousand people came to see Sunami play their second show. Three years after releasing their first album, Gulch have already announced their final tour. And Spy—a very new band with no music videos and only a four-song, seven-minute EP to their name—has somehow amassed over 17,000 monthly listeners on Spotify.

“I still can’t wrap my head around the numbers,” says singer Peter Pawlak. “How is it 17,000? That’s a lot. Especially for, like…punk music.”

This Friday, Spy release their sophomore album Habitual Offender via Raleigh, NC extreme music label To Live a Lie Records. Already, the hype has been high. After premiering on Brooklyn Vegan, lead single “Exceptional American” received write-ups in both Stereogum and New Noise—on top of thousands of plays from listeners.

“There’s definitely an excitement around Bay Area hardcore right now that people in other areas are feeling,” Pawlak says. “I think the fact that we’re from the Bay has been a massive help for the band.”

That may be the case, but there’s more to Spy than just locality. Even for hardcore, the band are gritty—an aesthetic laid bare in their tattoo flash sheet art style, piercing feedback and Pawlak’s esteemed array of vocal barks and pukes. 

“There’s something about the sound when it’s all blended together, it’s kind of…sinister or something,” he says. “Part of that is the anger coming through.” 

Anger is clearly a motivating force in the band, though Spy are about more than just unattached rage. Before forming the band, Pawlak earned an MA in Sociology at the University of British Columbia. In Spy, he channels—among other things—much of the frustration, fury and pain those across America have felt over the issue of police violence.

“The lyrics were originally written before everything that happened in the summer of 2020,” Pawlak says, referring to the weeks of protests which followed the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Here in San Jose, those protests sparked a broad push to defund or highly reform the police after scores of protestors were gassed and shot with rubber bullets, some left permanently maimed.

“I wrote those lyrics and then everything that happened last summer, it was like, ‘damn, here we go again,’” Pawlak says.

On the title track from Service Weapon, Spy lyricize the terror of police violence with the brutal quatrain: “show me your hands / put that phone down / get on the ground / service weapon is discharged.” On Habitual Offender’s restless, riff-packed lead single “Exceptional American,” Pawklak strikes a more observational stance, calling out police “overreach, abuse” before sarcastically applauding American exceptionalism:

“What a model citizen / Such a good American / Full of blind and thoughtless pride.”

Like their first EP, Habitual Offender was recorded at Fremont’s Panda Studios, and produced by Charles Toshio of Sunami. If the band sounds bigger this time around, there’s a simple reason for that: this time, the whole band was involved. Spy’s first EP—recorded in April of 2020, during the earliest, most uncertain days of the pandemic—was recorded entirely by Pawlak and drummer Cole Gilbert.

“We thought we were being responsible by only putting two people in the studio,” he says. “That was the era of social distancing and very early COVID stuff, so we just thought it would be smart to record with as few people as possible.”

Understandably, Pawlak describes the new album as “more of a team effort,” Spy’s guitarists Cody Kryst and Drew Satterlund not only chipping in parts to the songs, but performing together on record for the first time. Thrashy guitar leads—like the one in the worker-solidarity moshpit igniter “Labor Dispute”—expand the band’s sonic palette nicely, adding some color to the onslaught of merciless riffs. On all levels, Habitual Offender is bigger, louder and uglier than Spy has ever been before.

“We definitely have a particular sound,” Pawley says. “You know when it’s Spy you’re listening to.”

And though it has been billed as the band’s first LP, Habitual Offender is still only six songs. Total runtime: ten minutes. 

San Jose hardcore moves fast.

Habitual Offender
Out Fri
To Live a Lie Records

On Saturday, June 19, in a San Jose parking lot surrounded by car stereo garages and physical therapist businesses, over 2,000 people swarmed for the underground renegade show RBS—“Real Bay Shit.”

The event featured stars of the nationally renowned San Jose/Santa Cruz hardcore scene like Gulch, Sunami and Drain, along with similarly brutal acts from Southern California. Within a week, videos of the show went viral on YouTube, and media outlets ranging from KQED to Brooklyn Vegan picked up the story.

“It felt like being back home,” recalls Scowl guitarist Malachai Greene. “Our last show was the day before the lockdown. It’s just been so long, but the moment we hit the stage it was on.”

The first South Bay hardcore show since the lockdown, “RBS” went off according to true punk rock DIY (Do-It-Yourself) ethos. An impromptu stage was built, generators ran the power and sound was provided pro bono by East Bay Audio. Though the flyer was passed around online for weeks prior to the event, the location was only announced two hours before doors. Inside, local taco and burger vendors grilled sustenance for the hungry crowd.

Earlier that day, a pop-up merch event was held at a separate location, featuring highly coveted clothing from Drain, Scowl and Gulch (who all share band members), all made by Print Head—a printing company owned and operated by Cole Kakimoto, guitarist for Gulch and drummer for Scowl.

“We made like 600 shirts,” Kakimoto says. “I can’t believe people waited in that line for hours in the 100 degree heat.”

And wait they did.

The line for merchandise wrapped around several nearby buildings, and stayed hundreds of people deep for hours. While the average music fan might have seen the line and left, the fashionable hardcore scene showed up and couldn’t have been happier. Online, Gulch merchandise can sell out in minutes.

One attendee who asked only to be identified by the name David had waited in line for over two hours, saying simply: “we’re here for the experience.”

San Jose’s hardcore scene began blowing up on a national level around 2019. That year, both Gulch and Drain played Philadelphia’s This Is Hardcore Fest and caught a lot of attention for their unrelenting energy. Combined, those sets now have hundreds of thousands of plays on YouTube.

“All of these bands were working towards 2020 to be the year for shows, record releases and big tours,” explains Bay Area promoter Nick Dill, an attendee at RBS. “I can’t even imagine how big the scene will be in 2021.”

Last year, Drain, Gulch and Sunami all released new music, most of it to wide acclaim. Gulch’s Impenetrable Mental Fortress landed a glowing review in Pitchfork, and Drain’s thrashy California Cursed quickly went through multiple repressings on vinyl. Rather than slow down the scene’s momentum, the lack of touring only propelled it into overdrive, fans hungry for more music and merch to get them through the global uncertainty of the last fifteen months.

“It’s thriving,” Dill says. “We have so much support, and so many resources at our disposal that allow it to prosper and grow.”

For instance, Sunami’s first show was in October 2019, just months before the pandemic. Today, video of the punishing seven-minute set has almost one hundred thousand views on YouTube.

Still, it was surprising at RBS when singer Josef Alfonso’s mic went out and the entire crowd began chanting along to fill the silence. In the past, it might not have seemed like such a big deal. But considering this was only the second time Sunami has ever played live—and the first time most of the audience had ever seen them—it was a testament to just how big San Jose hardcore has become.

“This is amazing,” says an attendee named Ess. Like many at RBS, it was her and her sister’s first hardcore show, but definitely not their last.

“I randomly wanted to go to local San Jose shows so I looked up ‘Hardcore San Jose’ and Sunami popped up. We’re already going to go to the next show, too.”

With the state now reopened, San Jose’s hardcore scene is well on its way to becoming bigger than ever.

“It already is,” says Scowl.

Correction: An earlier version of this story quoted Nick Dill under a name previously used as a show promoter.

This local Latinx hardcore band pairs driving, bass-heavy intensity with militant lyricism, which takes aim squarely at socioeconomic inequality, racial injustice and structural violence. Songs like “STS” and “No Compromise” from their 2018 project, Disruptor, condemn creeping fascism and decry societal decay with potent verses that are as formally poetic as they are virile. Dolores holds fast to their commitment to uncompromising authenticity, radical political defiance, and the unifying power of music while sticking it to the man in true punk fashion.

Dolores
Sat, 8pm, $6
The Ritz, San Jose