Los Angeles hardcore has long had a fight on its hands in countering outside perspectives on the sunlight, the surf, the California of it all. But in the decades since Black Flag tapped into a strain of stifling pain and horror in their beach town, bands have consistently found ways to celebrate that juxtaposition, and to add further depth and nuance to a complicated dynamic. Entry play fast, brutal, grimy hardcore that stitches a knotty seam of Converge-style heaviness to songs with obvious roots in the west coast’s earliest thrashings. Where so many of their contemporaries scale step after step in order to drop in on a breakdown from the greatest height, this LA mob speed through songs based around clipped power chords, D‑beat callbacks and vocalist Sara G’...
