album reviews: turnstile / sunflower bean / honningbarna
or "rock v. hardcore"
note from antiart
This week, I planned to write a three album review of the new Turnstile, Honningbara and Mclusky records, with the genre of “hardcore” pulling them all together. Well, I don’t really care for the Mclusky album and the Turnstile album is barely hardcore. Honningbara certainly is, but I didn’t want to review it all by itself. So, this week will be a bit of a harebrained, Venn Diagram of sorts, with rock and hardcore being in the outer circles.
On the “anthemic rock” side, I’ve added Sunflower Bean’s newest called Mortal Primetime. In the middle is Turnstile’s NEVER ENOUGH, which embodies sounds from both genres. And then on the right is Honningbarna’s Soft Spot, which is more purely hardcore.
artist: sunflower bean
album: mortal primetime
grade: C+
This is the first Sunflower Bean album I’ve had the pleasure of listening to from announcement to release day, and I have to say, I am definitely impressed. Mortal Primetime is their best album that I’ve heard so far, although some of it’s potential is cut short by not fully investing in the new stylistic switch-up. When the band decides to take the leap, the album really shines.
The opening two tracks “Champagne Taste” and “Nothing Romantic” operate as a two-part suite, sharing similarly scuzzy rock guitar tones and theatrical, gothic vocals from lead singer Julia Cumming. “I’d drown all my sorrows, in the divey hallows of my fantasy, where I used to think my suffering made me immortal” reads like a dark work of fiction, but sounds so sweet and doesn’t feel verbose. The closer “Sunshine” is more shoegazy, but it’s ghostly call and response vocals and blaring guitars really work for the new era the band is in. I love the slower cuts, like “I Knew Love” and “Please Rewind”, even if they’re not fully with the vibe I’d expect. The vocals on each have this ‘70s AM pop tone to them that works. Plus, they work as two-sides of heartbreak — male and female, optimism and pessimism. And then there’s “There’s A Part I Can’t Get Back”, a jangly indie track on the surface, but when you dig into the lyrics, it’s actually about childhood trauma. It’s totally devastating, and fits into the album’s themes of unfinished business, things left unsaid, but from a much more tragic angle. “If I die before I wake I pray the lord let’s me get even first.” This one definitely couldn’t have been an easy one to write, and I think it’s a really brave expression of pain.
My issue with this record, aside from just flat out not liking a few of the songs, is the lack of cohesion. It’s seemingly marketed as a no-frills rock record with fuzzy gothic undertones, yet sonically it’s still hanging onto a more standard version of indie rock. Even on tracks like I really fuck with, like “I Knew Love”, I’m left wishing the style cohered more to shoegaze or goth rock. The reason for my grading is that this album has a lot of really great songs and hints at a full switch-up to a more exciting sound, but never goes all the way with it. My recommendation for Sunflower Bean is to go darker, louder and less cleanly produced with the next one. I know Julia is really into Type O Negative, that’s a good reference point (they did that doomy style justice on “Shake”, which should’ve been on this record.)
artist: turnstile
album: never enough
grade: C+
After splashing back onto the scene and re-debuting as the lords of pastel hardcore with 2021’s GLOW ON, people began to take them more seriously. They received major critical praise from outlets like Pitchfork, NME, and The Needle Drop (a hard trifecta to get) for combining their hardcore sound with elements of ’80s pop rock. I thought that was a great effort; I especially loved “ALIEN LOVE CALL” with Blood Orange.
Now they’re back, with a bigger audience than ever, to serve up a second helping of GLOW ON. The band has found their sound — jangly ’80s guitars, shouted vocals, raucous drums, occasional ethereal synths — but it’s not as exciting as it was the first time. Still, the sequel nature of this record brings some refined bangers, like "LIGHT DESIGN” and especially “I CARE.” The latter could’ve come from The Cure’s Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me, but Brendan Yates makes it his own with those anthemic leads. “SUNSHOWER” is another standout, starting with charged skate punk before switching to gorgeous synth pad ambience. “LOOK OUT FOR ME” does the gimmick even smoother, with a wall of guitars that transitions into elongated synths, an inspirational vocal snippet, and finally Jersey House bass and UK garage drums. I also like the strange demo quality in a section of “DULL,” with subdued guitar riffs and minimal tap drums, before more traditional rock guitars take over the chorus.
There are a ton of highlights, but anywhere that doesn’t fully embrace the new sound just feels standard. “SOLE” and “DREAMING” are too plain, sonically and especially lyrically. What Yates says can also hurt the record, especially compared to more complex hardcore like Honningbarna, who I’ll get into later. “Running from yourself now… never let your guard down… in the right place, at the right time,” from opener and title track “NEVER ENOUGH,” just reads as generic. Even on “I CARE,” which I love, it’s the performance that sells plain lyrics like “But do you really wanna fall apart, and do you really wanna break my heart?” This band is skating on thin ice. When it works, it’s because the new tricks and old tropes hit the right balance. When it doesn’t, it either gets lost in the hipster fog or feels like poser rock. Still, the band has a unique style that delivers fun tracks. I enjoyed more of NEVER ENOUGH than I didn’t, but I don’t love it.
Now, Soft Spot by Honningbarna is a different story…
artist: honningbarna
album: soft spot
grade: B+/A-
Turnstile’s last two albums to me were a solid entry point into hardcore and hard rock sounds, but bands like Norway’s Honningbarna take shit to the next level. If you’re a fan of harsh sounds but you also love anthemic vocals, groovy basslines, dancy hi-hats, and angular guitars, this is the record for you. It really defines and exercises its own specific brand of hardcore punk that’s both technically sound and really loose and fun. The leader singer has similar tendencies — he couples urgent, throat-shredding vocals with witty, sardonic lyrics about Sisyphus, Elon Musk, terrorist groups, cops, and so much more.
Not a moment of this record really fails to impress me or catch my attention, with the exception of one or two parts of specific songs. The intro “Alt går over, noe varer (Everything ends, some things last)” recounts the average, mundane life of an internet-influenced punk. He learns that saying slurs is wrong when he’s a teen, at 20 he finds himself working a menial factory gig, and at 70 he reads a book and “still [doesn’t] get what the fuck [the author] is talking about.” It sets this vaguely political, poetically nihilistic tone for the rest of the runtime — this narrator is perfectly suited for the exhausting, post-modern lense that we view everything through in 2025. “MP5” introduces some synthetic elements but still sticks to its punk guns while the lead singer screams lyrics about a Norwegian comedian crashing out with two loaded submachine guns. It’s reminiscent of Chat Pile’s “grimace_smoking_weed.jpeg” — mixing silly subject matter with dead-serious delivery. When you’re this locked in as a band, you get to fuck around.
“God Gutt (Good Boy)” is where the record gets its name from, with the dope-ass line: “soft spot for a fascist hot shot.” Society breaks young men down into husks of themselves — “plants mines in the field of dreams” — and it’s very relatable in that it provides a soundtrack to the global rat race we all find ourselves in. “Heute ist mein tag (Today is my day)” has a similarly creeping instrumental temperament and is also lyrically sarcastic in the same way. “You aren't a nihilist / You're just very sad / So when Jesus comes / Kill him again” is my favorite line. The closer “Ultraøyer (Ultraeyes)” gives the record somewhat of an industrial, doomy conclusion. It’s a slow-moving barnburner that builds up and lets all the tension out in the last minute. The lyrics are so literalist and devoid of humor that it becomes funny as a result: “I've seen Picasso / Faces don't look like that” and “What is it Sisyphus is smiling for / Eternally rolling a boulder must suck like hell.” Each track fits within the band’s canon but still finds its own way to be chaotic and explosive. It’s a real testament to the chemistry between the members and the command that the lead singer has over this material. I’m thoroughly impressed.
Please give this a listen — I promise it’s worth your time.