“I’ve been very bored for years with hardcore that’s not really about anything, so the plan with this band was to always be political.”
Norwich straight edge outfit Hour of Reprisal are one of the most exciting and important bands in the UK hardcore scene at the moment. They’ve just released their vicious new EP, Endless War, Endless Peace, which marks another step-up from the already excellent A New World from the Ashes of the Old they released back in 2023.
It’s a record stuffed with all the ignorant mosh riffs and squeaky guitar bits and twisted, piercing vocals listeners may have come to expect from the band, but with plenty of added flavours and easily the best production they’ve ever had:
Vocalist Joe Barber explains, “It feels like we were writing these songs forever - we’ve been playing 'Surgical Strike' live for the best part of a year! We’ve always written pretty separately - [guitarist] Mike writes most of the music by himself, I’ll have lyrics written without hearing a thing, and then I have to figure out how everything works. He can be a bit of a control freak with the riffs but this one is definitely a lot more collaborative between all of us.”
“We didn’t really go into it with a plan. If anything myself and Sam on the guitar have been pushing more metal influences into the sound (whenever we go to shows I force everyone to listen to Disembodied or Immolation the whole journey) but this record is a continuation of what people will expect if they’ve heard the last EP. We’re a dumb mosh band, dude. We aren’t gonna reinvent the wheel.”
Joe can call it dumb if he wants to, but the lyrics suggest otherwise. As indicated by his quote at the top, Hour of Reprisal have always had plenty of important stuff to say, and Endless War, Endless Peace covers all sorts.
“There’s never been a specific theme for us (and we’ll never be one of those straight edge bands that never sing about anything else!), but the new record covers the UK’s complicity in genocide and the boomerang effect that has on our own rights ('Surgical Strike'), malign western influence on rights in central Africa ('No Trace Remains'), over policing of protest ('Enforcer'), profiteering and privatisation ('Host & Parasite'), and bands not practicing what they preach ('Every Empty Word').”
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Presumably it is some combination of their uncompromising attitude and the fact that they have the killer tracks to back it up that has landed the band a load of sick support slots over the last couple of years: The Callous Daoboys, Madball, Fuming Mouth, Portrayal of Guilt, Terror, plus a load of the UK’s finest like Cauldron, Cruelty, Going Off, and Realm of Torment. Not bad for a band from a part of the country with a relatively small hardcore scene.
“Yeah, I think playing a lot has definitely made us a better band,” Joe concurs. “Norwich is pretty isolated as far as England goes so we’ve always had to travel a lot for shows, and we’ve always had to bring our A-game to make people keep wanting to book us because we don’t have a big local scene to fall back on. We don’t get to play with a ton of other metalcore bands so we’re always trying to figure out what’s gonna work and what isn’t (the Callous Daoboys fans were more into it than the Madball crowd were!)”
They are also, of course, still proudly flying the flag for the straight edge, even as many others seem to fall by the wayside. “Dude I wish there was more of it!” Joe offers. “When we started it felt like every other band was straight edge but now we’re back to sticking out like crazy again. It’s basically us, xApothecaryx, Cannonball, Supernova, and Eyeteeth, I think?”
And as for the future?
“Well, we’re hoping to hit the mainland this year. We’ve had a couple offers so far but not really been able to make anything work, but I got a message about a straight edge festival in Italy at the end of the year and I’m desperate to make it happen.
"I don’t think Sam’s ever left the country so being trapped in a van with us for a week should be a real eye opener for him. I wanna do country specific covers. I told Tim from BBMA that if we do Germany we’ll open with Caliban ‘In the Eye of the Storm’ and he said he’d kill people, so look out for that, I guess?”
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Endless War, Endless Peace is out now via Betrayed By Life Records (UK) and Bound By Modern Age Records (EU).
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