Imagine being a hardcore band looking to really make a break at this precise moment in 2024. Gotta feel pretty thankless, doesn’t it? Like, on one side, you’ve got Knocked Loose who released their opus about five minutes ago, that’s already one of the most celebrated albums of the year; on the other, there’s the slew of mono-named bruisers—your Speeds, your Scowls et al—determined to railroad every facet of the genre into its most electrifying extreme. And somewhere among all of that is Candy, looking to get some of that oxygen that’s quickly running out with what’s touted as their own prospective swing into the stratosphere.
‘Hypercore’ is a term you’ll find taking form on It’s Inside You, as if to clearly delineate how Candy’s adventures in hardcore differ from their peers’. Their home on Relapse is a decent starting block for that, though the journey of disruption and deconstruction within hardcore doesn’t take them through typical label climes of sludge and grind. Maybe you could say it’s akin to electronic music, if a huge chunk of tunefulness was beaten out of it to resemble a grislier gap-bridger. Hell, Dancing To The Infinite Beat might be the closest that hardcore has ever gotten to a trance song, thanks to the head-battering percussion inflamed by its darts of beeping synth.
It’s a bit of an insane choice, obviously, and the moment where Candy’s slobberknocking reaches a demented fever pitch. Elsewhere, it’s a little more…pfft, ‘subtle’—the grating bass and pseudo-gothic ambience of Love Like Snow, or Dehumanize Me where ‘industrial’ can only be suitably illustrated by being pummelled to nothingness by actual factory machinery. They’re natural enough pivots for hardcore to go to, but also feel as cutting-edge as Candy clearly want. As set in stone as hardcore can be sometimes—in its tones, execution, collection of sounds drawn from and the like—Candy do arrange them in a way that’s really not all that common.
Or, at least, they do sometimes. If It’s Inside You can be praised wholeheartedly for anything, it’s for being a neat proof of concept that doesn’t necessarily stretch the entire way. The pounding and clashing and grinding is all cool, but it’s not what the whole album sounds like; there’s still plenty more meat-and-potatoes metallic hardcore that’s just a bit less interesting, honestly. It’s why ending with Dancing To The Infinite Beat and Hypercore as the two most full-throttle ragers is such a strange choice, as if working to see Candy at top creative strength is a pushed necessity. And sure, it makes sense to end on your most ostentatious high, but it doesn’t have to be reserved for just that. You don’t need to worry about diluting something where the whole purpose is how volatile and unfriendly it sounds.
Now, it certainly could be worse—if Candy weren’t good at throwing the usual hardcore shapes, this would be a much more concerning situation. As it stands, It’s Inside You is pretty concise and considerate when showing its variety of faces, and Candy’s dyed-in-the-wool hardcore stance is still very solid. Just like any band with a cement-cracking low end and a rabid wolverine disguised as a human for its vocals is liable to, they know how to straight up fly off the handle on songs like Short Circuit and Faith 91, celebrations of hardcore’s most visceral and adrenalised fronts. A couple of buddies from the scene do add their own touches—namely alumni of Integrity, Trapped Under Ice and Trash Talk—but you could also say that just sweetens an already delicious deal. On their own, Candy are more than capable of swiftly knocking some heads off with negligible hassle.
Even just from that, It’s Inside You sits as a completely respective addition to the growing-by-the-hour canon of hardcore. From a perspective of both streetwise stompers and the architects that know how to do more with them, Candy are casting out a pretty interesting net here. And yes, you can argue this is more a case of them testing the waters. It probably works better if you do; it fits with the incremental increases that each release up to now has shown, anyway. They’re putting some phenomenal ideas out there, and even if this isn’t top-tier as a package just yet, just you wait until they get there. And even now, it’s still another case where the beating is so savage and succinct, you aren’t forgetting it in a rush regardless.
For fans of: Trash Talk, Integrity, Inclination
‘It’s Inside You’ by Candy is released on 7th June on Relapse Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
