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Album Review

Regulate – ‘Regulate’ [Album Review]

Overall, ‘Regulate’ (Flatspot Records) is a landmark moment for Regulate. This is not an album to be missed, not unless you want to let inventive, riveting hardcore pass you by.

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This is Regulate’s year. After a stacked summer making appearances at This Is Hardcore and The Rumble, followed by touring in support of Vein.fm and Candy, the New York four-piece have been building up more and more momentum in advance of their latest full-length, Regulate (out via Flatspot Records). So with all of that buildup, how does it deliver?

In short: in spades. The band has managed to strike a balance between blasting old-school hardcore that any NY hardcore crew would be proud to call their own and seething, emotive ballads. But added to this are flavours of Latin American roots, pop-punk, and alt-rock. It’s a smorgasbord, and in less capable hands, there’s always the risk of creating a kitchen sink mess. Not so on this album. It’s woven beautifully well; clearly, there were heaps of attention paid by the band to detail, production, and delivery. Much of the reason for this success is the sequencing of the album itself: where else would the salsa of “Ugata” find its most impactful drop in than in classic hardcore track “You & I”? How much better a pairing can you find than the straightforward aggression of “Why Can’t We?” and subsequent melodic banger “Hair”?

Also contributing to this record’s successful delivery are the mercury smooth swings that vocalist Sebastian Paba takes between throat-tearing aggression and melodic singing, on par with the likes of Alexisonfire or Turnstile. In addition to the technical prowess of their hot-cold approach on the record, there’s also the lyrical focus on themes ranging from genocide to policing to the process of making music itself. It’s handled with enough nuance to set it apart from the ham-fisted grappling many bands in the hardcore vein struggle with when talking about those topics.

Overall, Regulate is a landmark moment for the band, an achievement that has come about from nearing on a decade of playing, touring, and recording, with a resilience that is a credit to their home city. This is not an album to be missed, not unless you want to let inventive, riveting hardcore pass you by.

Regulate, photo by Rebecca Lader

Regulate Track Listing:

1. In The Moment
2. The Crime
3. Why Can’t We?
4. Hair
5. Ugata
6. You & I
7. In This Life And The Next (H.H.C.)
8. Work
9. New York Hates You
10. C.O.P

Run Time: 25:22
Release Date: September 30, 2022
Record Label: Flatspot Records

Director of Communications @ V13. Lance Marwood is a music and entertainment writer who has been featured in both digital and print publications, including a foreword for the book "Toronto DIY: (2008-2013)" and The Continuist. He has been creating and coordinating content for V13 since 2015 (back when it was PureGrainAudio); before that he wrote and hosted a radio and online series called The Hard Stuff , featuring interviews with bands and insight into the Toronto DIY and wider hardcore punk scene. He has performed in bands and played shows alongside acts such as Expectorated Sequence, S.H.I.T., and Full of Hell.

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