Enough Turnstile

Sleep Token was a good punchline for a few days. You remember that, right? Haha, the band that’s bringing metal back sounds like Ed Sheeran and Hozier, how embarrassing. Just a new iteration of Ghost, guys dressing up and putting on airs to appeal to Tumblr fandomites with intricate lore and excavating lyrics for meaning. How could any serious music listener take them seriously, am I right?

Now Turnstile, oh yeah baby they’re bringing rock back. They’re transcending hardcore. No more bro-y beatdown Madball/Terror shit anymore. They’re on a big label! Their accompanying film premiered at Tribeca! The critic-approved hardcore has arrived, serious and buttoned-up, stretching its wings into different genres, a little ska there, a little yacht rock here, it’s all very sophisticated and mature. You definitely need to take them seriously.

I do commend Turnstile for essentially turning in the exact same record as GLOW ON to Roadrunner and calling it a day. What was already a pretty bad buttrock album dressed up in shoegaze and hardcore tones has undergone further plastic surgery to morph into other genres and little experimentations. Like really? Faye Webster, A.G. Cook and Hayley Williams features? Are you guys ran by a focus group? NEVER ENOUGH is so tailor-made for Urban Outfitters shelves and brand collaborations, you could imagine Living Mas™ with Turnstile as you chow down on Quesaritos and Cheesy Gordita Crunches with your inoffensive-looking racially diverse millennial cohort.

What really amazes me is how sonically flaccid all these riffs are. The pristine, sanded-off tones might as well be Kidz Bop cover material, there’s zero punch or depth to any of it. It’s Jack Antonoff-esque engineering, friction becoming null and turning the guitars into musical pool noodles. I don’t understand how you come up in one of the most prestigious hardcore towns in America and lose the cutting edge that bands like Trapped Under Ice, End It, and Jivebomb are known for. Special blame goes to Will Yip, one of the most egregious producers in all of popular music. His Wikipedia discography looks like a graveyard of bad emo, post-hardcore and mallcore.

It pisses me off even more to consider Turnstile has become the lodestone when hardcore is in a golden age at the moment. Doubt! SPEED! Gel! Soul Glo! Zulu! There are so many bands ripping shit right now that this middling crossover dreck becoming the biggest breakthrough is lame as fuck. I’m not even a hardcore purist or some gatekeeper either; I don’t profess to be an authority on the genre, but I can tell when shit’s the real deal, if it passes the authenticity test. The swag is just nonexistent.

Turnstile reminds me of the buzzy punk bands that I really disliked at the beginning of 2010s: Turnover, Balance & Composure, Citizen, Basement, etc. Glossy indie/shoegaze-adjacent bands who lacked riffs or any type of compelling hooks to bolster their punk bona fides. It’s what Coldplay is to Radiohead, what Mumford & Sons are to Grizzly Bear, Greta Von Fleet to Led Zeppelin, you get the picture. But hey, I’m sure the kids that can afford to go see them at Coachella will have a great time.