For Life
I have often worried that I talk about mental health "too much." After this week, I am committed to destroying that fear.
Anti-Matter
Contemplation and hardcore conversation, delivered straight to your inbox. We believe that hardcore is more than music.
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Latest episodes
The Best of Anti-Matter
The archives are free and open until 2025. Preorders for the final merch drop are winding down shortly. It's the holiday season, so let's put a bow on it.
The Best Songs of 2024 with Ned Russin of Glitterer
For this final conversation of 2024 (and the foreseeable future), Ned Russin and I each pick our three favorite songs of the year and discuss them—with whatever else comes up in the process.
To End a Letter
On the eve of our indefinite hiatus, I offer you gratitude—and a gift. Let it be known that we did something special here.
In Conversation: Pete Wentz of Fall Out Boy
Before he became a pop culture figure, Pete Wentz was a staple of Chicago's hardcore scene in the '90s. If you talk to him now, you'll know: His heart never left.
Keeping Up Disappearances
Notoriety comes at different levels, from the kid with the fanzine to the guy on TV. But how does growing up as a hardcore kid prepare you—or leave you unprepared—for being perceived?
AM Radio: November 2024
The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.
In Conversation: Dan Campbell of The Wonder Years
He started his band as a joke, but 17 years later, Dan Campbell has become one of our community's most honest, incisive, and dead serious lyricists. Helping people, he says, has helped himself.
You're the Reason I Don't Want the World to End
It's never easy to know when, but sadly, all things must pass.
In Conversation: Bryan Garris of Knocked Loose
They've broken every ceiling a hardcore band has ever broken, but Bryan Garris refuses to discard the DIY idealism that birthed Knocked Loose. That doesn't mean there haven't been growing pains.
Media Blitz
Debates over "hardcore ethics" typically turn our focus to major labels or ticket prices. Meanwhile, the ethics of doing an interview—on either side of the table—have gone grossly under-explored.
In Conversation: Vinnie Stigma of Agnostic Front
A new memoir dubs him "the most interesting man in the world," but the reality of being Vinnie Stigma is a lot more down-to-earth: He has only ever wanted to honor the people and places that made him.
What Price Happiness?
For some, social media provided a platform for hardcore kids to treat each other like soulless ones and zeroes. The joy in hardcore shouldn't be this hard to find.
AM Radio: October 2024
The best new hardcore and community-made music, updated monthly for Anti-Matter.
In Conversation: Chris Evenson of Sense Field
Sense Field spent their early days convinced the hardcore scene would reject them—only to become one of our best-loved bands. Chris Evenson remembers the late Jon Bunch as the engine that could.
Life Support
“Hardcore saved my life." We’ve all said it at one point or another. But when our personal struggles are too much to bear, we need to know: Asking for outside help is a matter of saving our own lives.
In Conversation: Craig Wedren of Shudder to Think
On the 30th anniversary of Pony Express Record, Craig Wedren looks back on the era with more wonder than regret. To say he simply "survived" the nineties would be a literal understatement.
Recreate The World
Revolution Summer is best known as the moment Washington D.C. centered political activism and personal expression in hardcore. But it was also an era when bands reclaimed the punk joy in being weird.
In Conversation: Jeremy Bolm of Touché Amoré
On Touché Amoré's new album, Jeremy Bolm explores the pernicious dread of modern living through a deeply personal lens. The hardest part, he says, is knowing that's not the same thing as "fixing" it.
So Much Staying Alive
There was a time when accusations of "selling out" could end even the most promising careers, but these days, the term has lost all its sting. That's not necessarily a bad thing.