Baltimore Hardcore Band on Its New Album

E
verything about Justice Tripp is authentic — aside from his golden front teeth. Still, he came by those honestly. “I’ve had my nose broken seven times and my front teeth both knocked out seven times,” says the Baltimore musician, who has been slowly fixing his body after a lifetime of moshing (and a stint of powerlifting). “I would say so much of my musical identity is in spite of fakeness [or] phoning it in.”

Angel Du$t, the hardcore band that he fronts, are dropping their sixth studio album, Cold 2 the Touch, on Feb. 13 — a tight, loud, rampage of a record that harks back to the band’s harder days without abandoning any of the eccentricities that make Angel Du$t sound distinctly them. “The epitome of art is authenticity,” Tripp says. “And that’s the goal for this record: not adhere to expectations. It wasn’t intentional to make it sound like all these eras of our life, but that’s what you get.”

Angel Du$t was born out of the same primordial stew as their Grammy-winning friends Turnstile. Tripp was the singer in another hardcore band, Trapped Under Ice, where Turnstile singer Brandon Yates played drums; he formed his current project in 2013, initially with Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang. Since then, Tripp has been the only constant in the lineup, which now features guitarists Steve Marino and Jim Caroll, bassist Zechariah Ghostribe, and drummer Nick Lewis. Since jump, though, Tripp hasn’t been afraid to push the boundaries of what hardcore could sound like.

“Angel Du$t, to me, is the first modern band that truly implemented melody into hardcore, and it was at a moment where it was definitely not in vogue to do so,” says Ian Shelton of Militarie Gun, another friend and frequent collaborator. “They’re the band that is actually taking the criticism to push the genre of punk music, of hardcore, whatever you want to call it, into different, scarier places creatively — because it’s from a place of authenticity, of experimentation, of exploring what seems interesting to Justice.”

What’s interesting to Justice this time around, then, is rock & roll, or at least the energy that it represents. “The current state of rock & roll music is hardcore,” he says. “You go to the hardcore show and you’re getting the most stripped-down, raw, organic version of rock & roll music. And for me, I’d like to keep that as pure as possible.”

That’s immediately apparent in album opener “Pain Is a Must,” a teeth-kicker featuring vocals by Terror’s Scott Vogel. “It’s about suffering for what you love to do. That’s what my life has been,” says Tripp, who gave up a steady job doing HVAC and plumbing because he’d be miserable if faced with a life of fixing leaks at 4 a.m. “I’ve given myself to music, and it ended up working out, and I’m very grateful. But there was never an expectation of it working out. The only expectation was, ‘I’m going to give myself entirely this; I’m going to suffer.’”

The album, produced by fellow musician Brian McTernan, features a suite of guest stars in addition to Vogel: Wes Eisold of American Nightmare and Cold Cave, Restraining Order’s Patrick Cozens, recent Sex Pistols vocalist Frank Carter, and Taylor Young of Twitching Tongues and Deadbody.

“Music’s at this really cool point where collaboration is such a thing,” says Tripp. “Everybody on the record is someone I hugely admire. There’s no, ‘We’re gonna get this person because they have the most followers on the internet.’ I’ve seen that angle working in music. But the value is exclusively great artists who have already given this band so much. So it makes sense to have them.”

Tripp is allergic to that mindset — inorganically integrating artists or sounds into his world for the clicks. “I have been involved with records where people say, ‘Hey, look, this is what we’re doing. We’re imitating this thing.’ But I guess I’m way past the point of my life of wanting to rehash or relive something that somebody else did,” he says. “I’ve had bands come to me and say, ‘Hey, we really like Angel Du$t and that’s what we’re trying to do.’ It’s like, ‘Don’t do that.’”

Sure, Tripp has his own influences, but he’s less about aping than inspiration. “Prince is probably the most influential thing on everything I do musically,” he says. “Nobody’s ever gonna listen to what I do and say, ‘Oh, man, this guy loves Prince.’ I don’t want to imitate Prince. I want to take something from his energy and make it my own thing.” It makes sense, then, that he was voted “Most Likely to Trip Across Stage” in high school. Much like the Purple One, it could be argued, Tripp is all about “being performative in life.”

The title track, the pit-worthy “Cold 2 the Touch,” continues in that vein. “It’s about the lifelessness I see in the music industry,” Tripp says. “I literally hate bad art. It makes me sick. And I’m not a music snob. You can make terrible music if it’s genuine.” For example, he loves to bait music snobs by asking if they like Sublime. “You’ll get people that are immediately like, ‘No, I hate that.’ And it’s because it doesn’t match their identity,” he says. “Immediately, when you have that response, I know who you are. You’re a person who created a character, and you have to go express that to everybody and make sure everybody knows your character doesn’t align with Sublime.” (Note: He does like Sublime.)

Patrick Kindlon of Drug Church and Self Defense Family is similarly averse to posturing, and he  admires this band’s dedication to their own vibe. “Everybody in music who already doesn’t like you is waiting for you to make a record that validates their opinion of you to everybody else,” he says. “And Angel Du$t doesn’t do that, because even if you don’t like one record as much as the previous one, it never feels like an embarrassing effort. They don’t bite off more than they can chew. They just chew different food for an album. And I think that that’s pretty remarkable.”

That’s evident on the woozy “Jesus Head,” a blast of early-aughts-tinged space rock that sees Tripp accepting himself, even the broken bits. “I pretty much failed at everything in my life,” he says. “I’m just riddled with injuries. I’m terrible at socializing with people. On paper, I’m a failure at everything except music, and music is my saving grace. I know I do things that aren’t healthy, and I have habits where I’m not always the most pleasant person. But it’s what I got. So, I’m embracing that again.”

And never is that more clear than in the new single “I’m the Outside,” which isn’t about being an outsider so much as being the outside — the refuge for the weird kids. “I’m on the outside of the mentality of letting society get to me and beat me up,” Tripp says. “But I can put energy out there, and I can create space for people to feel welcome.”