Philadelphia's hardcore punks STATICLONE sign to Relapse Records and make their debut with the crushing new album, Better Living Through Static Vision. Hardcore and punk aren't genres that necessarily celebrate change. It’s not like the music is stagnant; far from it! It’s more that the tried and true is rewarded while anything new, anything different, is greeted with a quizzical eyebrow and the spoken or unspoken question of: “Is this good? Can you mosh to it?" If there was anyone in Philadelphia who could answer those queries with expert authority it’s George Hirsch and Dave Walling. Though really, you don’t even need to ask them. Put on the debut album by STATICLONE, the band they started at the tail end of their previous outfit Blacklisted, and you’ll find all the answers you need. “I started going to hardcore shows in 1995,” singer and guitarist Hirsch says. “So the fact that I’m still here right now talking about a band that I’m a part of that wrote a hardcore record in 2024 means that we’re pretty committed. I don’t think that could be denied at this point even if we wanted to.” Outside of Blacklisted, which drummer Jeff Ziga was also part of for many years, STATICLONE claims a lineage that includes Shark Attack, Damage, Armalite, and countless other standouts as well as work with some hardcore heavyweights like Converge and Nails. On Better Living Through Static Vision you can hear Hirsch, guitarist/bassist Walling, and Ziga channel everything from crust to metal, and the hardcore punk they’ve all been steeped in for decades. In the sum of those parts STATICLONE follows the path of Disfear, Wolfbrigade, Inepsy, and other groups that combine d-beat ferocity with rock n’ roll riffs. The lyrics on the album, all written by Hirsch, focus on themes of alienation and loss. Over the course of the last few years he moved to Chicago and then back home to Philly. This was a time where everything was different and difficult emerging from the pandemic, but for Hirsch there was an added element of seeing his old neighborhood go downhill. Those feelings are addressed head-on in the song “Alone In Philadelphia”:
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