Provoke – Still Here 7”

Recently, I’ve stumbled upon a very promising hardcore punk band from Oakland, California. I was impressed by the sheerness of their sound, monumental guitar riffs which are bringing old school hardcore punk back on the map with a style, gritty distorted basslines, very impressive maniacally fast drumming and last, but most important, brilliant female vocals which are tearing apart everything on the way. Their name is Provoke and Still Here is their brand new incredible release which will blow you away with first beats of Prison Strike, a great starting point for an introduction with the sound of the band. The band indicates great opening tune with a classic guitar intro which leads to a ferociously enraged sound of the Provoke. Basura is the next track where the band is singing in their native Spanish language, proudly presenting just a part of their multicultural heritage. The tune is slightly slower than Prison Strike, but still very good with a d-beat tempo involved on the entire track. But the band is just getting started, with Here First, probably the fastest and most aggressive song of Still Here EP. I am immensely impressed by the great vocals skills, her rage is undoubtfully 50% of the band, but still, the rest of the band are responsible for such great arrangements which reminded me of a lot of hardcore punk bands from the eighties and the nineties. The last, but not the least is Get Out, great closure to the amazing material by the Provoke, a very promising band which will easily shake the foundations of the worldwide hardcore punk scene. Lyrically, the band is dealing with a lot of issues which has been on the plate for many years, like politics of race, rotten system, colonization, all the issues which are the main problem in the US and the rest of the world for ages. Still Here EP is currently available digitally on their bandcamp page, but you can also pay a visit to their bigcartel page for some merch and support work of this amazing hardworking band by grabbing a Still Here 7” record.