I’m originally from Worcester, which prides itself in being the home of bands like Frogball, Last Lights, and (fill in the blank with your favorite band). What the scene doesn’t clue you in on however, is that ten+ years ago, when the hardcore punk scene was in full force, it was a shitty time to be a queer person going to shows. As a result of this, I stay away from any iteration of the hardcore genre.

& while I may not appear to fit the profile of the best person to be covering “Thermo Dynamics of Life (Tape 2)” by Solarized put out in April of 2017, this release has drastically changed my perspective, on this impactful philly punk act & perhaps the next generation of hardcore music.

Maybe if more stuff like this had been coming out of my hometown, and more bands like this had been playing my hometown, I would have grown up loving hardcore music instead of being terrified of it.

So to me, there really is nothing quite like a queer band taking ahold of something that normally instills fear in you, and turning it into something powerful and radical that supports you. But I am well aware of the pitfalls of bands with queer members where everything written talks about queerness. With Solarized, this is not a pitfall. Their music provides new opportunity for diversity of social views on race, sexuality & gender to become an intractable philosophical piece of the evolving, ever renegotiating  underground scene.

The lyrics on this tape are downright incredible: ‘my lost children are my ancestors/ we exist in a space time paradigm dominated by/ capitalism, colorism with a surveillance feature that automatically persecutes the feminine in all things/ so much has been lost/ I look for the lost things’.  

Solarized tells a good story throughout this EP, about surviving in a world that wasn’t made for you, surviving violence, fighting back against that violence, technology, empathy, & apathy. There is poetry in this tape, between walls of pounding drums and dark, brooding, exciting and epic guitar and bass lines. On “Thermo Dynamics of Life”,  the music compels me to hold my truth as a queer person inside my body like a hurricane. I can’t fathom the transformative experience of having that spiraling truth hurricane surrounded by the other hurricanes of show goers, each holding their own truth, surrounding the tempest that is a loud, determined, punk band.

Check out all of Solarized’s music at https://solarized.bandcamp.com/