Three One G Records

Zealot R.I.P.’s self-titled EP is just over six minutes of heavy, fast metallic hardcore or maybe hardcore metal or metal with a hardcore heart. (Genre labels don’t matter. What’s important here are the songs.) These tracks from the band’s Three One G-released 12” EP are flawless, ripping, ruthless, barbaric little warriors that will remind you why you love heavy music, why it matters, why it makes your blood quicken and race, why you continue to listen to something a lot of people consider obnoxious. (If this is obnoxious, I’d rather be obnoxious than understood.) This EP was released two years ago today. The birthday party is now and you are invited.

The band is Jason Hamacher (Frodus, Battery, CombatWoundedVeteren), Mike Schleibaum (Darkest Hour), Peter Tsouras (Fairweather), and Blake Harrison (Pig Destroyer), and together they create a thing that sounds like Japanese monsters fighting, wrecking balls smashing towers, and bridges dynamited into a mushroom cloud of dust and splinters. This is merciless violence in the name of betterment, release, feeling better, being happier, rising above bullshit, transcending the ugly, piteous nightmare of life on this mess of a planet. I can’t wait to see what’s next.

–Adam Gnade, author of the books Locust House, This is the End of Something But It’s Not the End of You, and Float Me Away, Floodwaters