‘FUCK ICE!’: How Turnstile is reinventing hardcore for the internet age

This article is partly taken from the winter 2025 issue of Dazed. Buy a copy of the magazine here.

Turnstile are the biggest hardcore band in the world right now, and they didn’t get there by playing it safe. There’s still a hard, rocky core to the Baltimore five-piece’s latest album, Never Enough, but it’s surrounded by something far more expansive – a world in which 80s synths merge into amped-up power chords, and the lineage of Bad Brains and Maryland legend Justice Tripp collide with contributions from AG Cook and Hayley Williams.

This widescreen approach has helped Turnstile reach new audiences, becoming the first hardcore band to play an NPR Tiny Desk concert – a performance that saw frontman Brendan Yates stage dive into the office’s inaugural moshpit. “It’s super sick that Turnstile have pushed the boundaries of hardcore,” says punk rap artist Kent Osborne, photographed for this story at the band’s Never Enough tour stop in Fort Worth, Texas. “They’ve allowed it to enter the lives of so many who probably wouldn’t have known about the genre at all.”

Featuring support from fellow punk-rock revivalists Speed and Amyl and the Sniffers, the show itself was filled with both hardcore first-timers and veterans. Together, these acts are recontextualising the scene’s language of heaviness for today’s digital, genre-diffuse youth, while reminding them of the collective euphoria catalysed by live music. “Even if it just looks like we like to hit each other, hardcore fans are so inclusive and loving,” says Julie, another fan at the show, explaining how Turnstile’s music helped her through her angsty teenage years while growing up in conservative, small-town Texas.

History came full circle that night when, much like Bad Brains’ campaigns against racism in the 80s and Rage Against the Machine’s condemnation of American imperialism in the 90s, Turnstile’s audience rallied around a new political message. “When Turnstile were playing the outro to ‘Look Out For Me’, a fan wrote ‘FUCK ICE’ on their phone and showed it to the audience camera,” recalls Julie. “We all started chanting ‘Fuck Ice’ too! It felt great to be around so many like-minded people.” Turnstile might be reinventing hardcore music for a new generation of listeners, but its spirit of inclusivity resonates now more than ever.

Check out the gallery above for a closer look inside the show.