Calling themselves "leftist scum" on their Bandcamp page, meet Power of Dusk, a hardcore band out of Champaign, Illinois. Formed in 2018, they lost steam during the pandemic lockdowns, but they were determined to get busy again.
"When we got back to doing shit, we had some more lineup changes until late 2022 when we settled on the lineup we have now," vocalist Vincent Aguilar tells me about Power of Dusk's reignition. "The rest of us have known each other in some capacity from playing in bands in Central Illinois/Champaign for many years now, and Ivan/Derrin/Nico grew up in the area."
Since forming, Power of Dusk have released two demos and a pair of EPs, with What We Deserve arriving on Halloween 2025. Vincent admittedly has a tough time nailing his band's sound down to one genre tag. "Well, it started pretty much as a straight up Hoax/Mysterious Guy Hardcore-Era ripoff band just for fun, at this point I’m not sure where shit begins and ends cuz I enjoy most kinds of punk and hardcore. Heavy hardcore written by punks?
"I’ve always loved noisy/feedback heavy d-beat, '80s hardcore like Poison Idea, and I’ve especially loved the intensity of stuff like Dropdead and Siege, even we don’t go nearly as fast so maybe some of that might come through in the riffs, maybe not. I’m curious how other people would describe it cuz I dunno anymore."
The lyrics on What We Deserve deserve some highlighting, so I ask Vincent for some insight on his inspiration there. "Most of our songs have been about typical sociopolitical bullshit through the lens of my major social anxiety and insecurity," says the vocalist. "Usually my anger in past releases comes through with some sort of 'call to action' of sorts or some sort of defiance. Like, our last release was If You Don’t Speak, which is like, 'hey, if you don’t speak, what do you expect to change, right?' And I’m still into that and all but the other two songs and kinda just the whole tone of the release in general maybe come more from a place of exhaustion and resignation this time.
"It just kinda seems like despite all these people (including myself) who purportedly have the best intentions and want to spread awareness and shit, real bad shit still keep happening - ICE raids, war and death Gaza and Ethiopia and Ukraine and Congo and Sudan and Myanmar and Yemen and so on and so forth, political violence and conflict, whole families and regions decimated by a pandemic, list goes on.
"I want things to get better and there are a lot of innocents getting hurt by people who face no repercussions but maybe as a human race we do deserve total annihilation since there seems to no end in sight, and a lot of talk towards the opposite seems empty. I also wanna be clear I’m not saying I’m not part of the problem or that I have this shit figured out. I'm just trying to navigate this shit with as few panic attacks as possible."
Despite his warranted frustration with the state of affairs in the U.S., Vincent is encouraged by his local punk scene in Illinois. "It’s been pretty cool to see the rise of benefit shows lately, I’ve never seen as many in the region as I have in the past handful of years - successful ones, too. I think that kinda shit is the bare minimum we can do and one of the easiest ways to contribute positively in some small way to our immediate surroundings and support people doing the actual work.
"It’s easy to get super discouraged when I see shit like ICE Raids in Chicago - especially since a lot of that shit is happening in the neighborhoods my dad and his family grew up in when they immigrated here. I feel like we can’t do anything about it, and we probably really can’t without an armed response.
"What we can do right now is raise a few thousand or more for immigration advocacy organizations in Central Illinois to soften the blow when that stuff happens here, as one example. Pick your cause really, and consider keeping it local to help the people around us. Especially since those organizations have tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars in expenses every year."
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Power of Dusk on social media: Instagram
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