It isn’t every day that a hardcore band from New Hampshire are able to carve out a name for themselves amidst the ever-expanding and vast sea of their contemporaries, but with their debut demo, aptly titled Demo 2025, Retract have done just that.
This past year, Derek Archambault (Defeater, Alcoa) approached drummer Adam Cyr (Corrective Measure) about collaborating on a new demo with vocalist Courtney Sullivan. When indie rock stalwart Ezra Cohen (Ezra Cohen and the Big City Band) was set to record the band’s first demo he had never played in a hardcore band before. Instead, he had cut his teeth playing melodic punk and rock ‘n’ roll in New Hampshire’s music scene. But he ended up joining the band as its guitarist just before the recording sessions for the demo began. What results is an accessible and cacophonous set of hardcore tunes that blends the raging speed of bands such as Outbreak with the gimmick-free and in-your-face tradition of the third wave youth crew revival era.
Comparisons to classic hardcore be damned—what stands out on the demo is the raspy delivery of vocalist Courtney Sullivan and the unbridled rage the band manages to channel through its forceful tempos and adept lyricism. The demo creates the sense that faith in hardcore as a genre can be restored through the resurrection of tropes long thought dead. As the band’s reception at its first show with Jivebomb, Headcase, Gumskab, and Zinc in Maine suggests, there will be plenty of welcome gang vocals, two-steps, and pile ups to go around in the near future.
Words by Paul Rowe / Photograph by Samuel Marquis
