Just a few days ago, Shattered Realm hit music streaming outlets with Scars From Lessons Learned, the band's first new material since the '00s decade. The release is comprised of an intro, two new tracks, and a reworked version of "The World Is Mine," a song from their 2002 debut LP, Broken Ties... Spoken Lies.
The New Jersey/Pennsylvania-based metallic hardcore outfit is fronted by Joe "Hardcore" McKay, who most of you know from his decades-long work as a show promoter, and the main force behind the annual This Is Hardcore festival in Philadelphia.
I caught up with Joe to get the skinny behind the new Shattered Realm release, their future plans, and what newer hardcore bands he's feeling good about right now.
We've chatted on the site before, but since this is the first time we're focusing on Shattered Realm, please bring us up to date on this new release and what spurred it into action.
Jay Way (Bayway, Shattered Realm, 25 ta Life) brought new life into Shattered Realm by bringing 3/5th of Bayway into the lineup of the band. He also brought in a song that masterfully pulled from the Shattered Realm of the past and gave it a modern polish. I heard music but needed to see these guys pull it off, so I went to BayWay Studios, which is the operation center for all of this now.
They played the "new song" that he'd sent over to me and I was floored. A battle plan emerged immediately as to what to do, and what comes next.
We spoke on lyrics for what would become "Point of No Return" on this Scars From Lessons Learned EP. The track incorporates the quote from Caesar's "The Die Is Cast" ("Alea iacta Est") as he crosses the Rubicon with his Legion.
Taking the band back in 2017, playing various fests, local shows, and taking trips to the Midwest and Florida, was the proving ground to get Shattered Realm to the moment where we are now not able to go back since we released this material. This will be us as a group taking on what comes from releasing new songs under the name.
Jay was elated with the ideas and sent me a basic pattern and some thoughts and they were so dead-on that I knew we were on the same wavelength. The Die Is Cast = This is Shattered Realm - Point of No Return- we are only going forward from this release.
Tell me a bit about "Strong Hands," the other brand new track on this release.
"Strong Hands" is this gritty heavy-ass song that I know people would get moving on the floor and I didn't want to oversaturate it with too many words or silly fuck you things. I'm in my mid-40s and the lyrical trappings of a heavy band can lead you into shallow spaces but again, Jay Way and I spoke a lot about working in the day on the things that bring us money for our families and pursuit of what we love to do at night and grinding it to make it all happen.
Whether it be on the jobsites or putting on shows from the late '90s til today, or touring in the bands, or pushing This Is Hardcore fest, it's all been work. So light allegorical stuff on the importance of working towards goals, not taking short cuts and it ends on the cut and dry statements of the importance of putting in the work and not hoping for something or waiting for anything.
What was it about “This World Is Mine” that inspired you to reimagine it?
Honestly, it made total sense as it was a song that has never left the setlist since it was written over 20 years ago. Its a fan favorite and we would sometimes have to play it 2 times a set when we would get to parts of Europe where the people were asking for more .
It stayed in the mix and always brought everyone up front for sing alongs and putting it through the BayWay Studios mix just gave it a boost in my opinion. Releasing 2 new songs and a fan favorite gave older fans a good litmus of what something they're familiar sounds like from us now.
Scars From Lessons Learned was released on Bayway Records.
This the tip of the spear for what's coming from Shattered Realm musically. The problem being is needed to come out and few prominent labels would be interested in such short music offerings and after we knocked on a few doors and were told it was great but too short, we chose the path of least resistnace and ownership of our stuff, so this will be a Bayway Records release with tapes and CDs on presale after this week of shows.
In our way, we will push this as hard as we can. After the holidays, Bayway plays FYA and then its a winter of grinding out 6 more tracks or so to add to these tracks to complete the spear so to speak, and hopefully will have some good news for you to report about us working with a label.
The exciting part is just being able to push our music through a channel that we control so we have some stock in not only being responsible to get it out there, but to gauge the interest and progress in the process so we don't sit back and try to rely on someone else to get us where we want to be.
How active do you see Shattered Realm being in 2025?
With family and career responsibilties, and Bayway being a band that is demand, we will strategically continue to pick shows out of town that we have either not gotten to yet, or return to some familiar regions where we laid off of until this first bit of new music came to light.
The concept of an American 30-day tour seems to be something of an old idea most bands don't follow, but we have the motivation to go back to old-school touring stuff so we can connect with everyone who's been asking us to come through and manage our day jobs at the same time.
This release gives us the pop and inertia to push ourselves in these halls all over the East Coast and out to some places that we've not played in 20 years and reconnect with old friends and play with the new bands.
Shattered Realm will be playing this coming weekend's Holiday Jam in Reading, Pennsylvania alongside some great bands. Since you also book so many shows, what are some up and coming bands we should be on the lookout for next year?
I haven't namedropped Bayway enough. I'd like to see Last Man Out continue to grow after their set at the Church, the guys in Blacklisted have a new project I'd love to see coming to light. Not One Truth from New Jersey is back and they played some shows.
I'd love to see Bob Wilson (FYA Fest) in a new band since Greg is bringing the Mongoloids back. There is a band from Jersey called Denial that the oldest member is 15 and the youngest might be 10 years old. Human Blister from Jersey rules and they are young kids who sound like they should be on Relapse Records.
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