In 2021, Baltimore hardcore band Turnstile released GLOW ON to universal critical acclaim for how it stretched the definitions of a genre that had long been seen as stagnant in its development and rigid in its creative approach.
As Turnstile made the late-night circuits and earned Grammy nominations, other hardcore bands that had also been stretching the limits of the genre began to capture audiences.
Recently, Mannequin Pussy and Soul Glo, two hardcore bands from the Philadelphia scene, have captured national attention as they prepared for their spring tour. On March 1, Mannequin Pussy released the album I Got Heaven with a “Best New Music” rating on Pitchfork and high praise from Kerrang!, Paste, Rolling Stone and the Dallas Observer.
In 2022, Soul Glo’s Diaspora Problems also received a “Best New Music” rating. The band also earned a spot opening for My Chemical Romance alongside Turnstile later that summer.
On March 22, 2024, Soul Glo became the first hardcore band to play NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series and start the series’ first mosh pit. Within a week of the performance, Soul Glo announced on its social media that its current tour had sold out.
Since then, the tour’s stop at Tulips in Fort Worth had been impossible to get tickets for, with some tickets on StubHub seeing prices as high as $687.
Fans of each band have known for years that they bring something special to the genre and to the stage. For Mannequin Pussy, it has been the fearless female vocals delivering vulnerability and ferocious strength set against music that moves seamlessly between assertive hardcore and dreamy alt-rock.
For Soul Glo, it has been the defiant screams of the Black American experience, blurring the lines between doomsayer hip-hop and hardcore — a message that could not be more clear in the band’s most recent single “If I Speak (Shut the Fuck Up).”
In this moment, it is difficult to find any two bands more deserving to be following in Turnstile’s footsteps in bringing hardcore music to a more mainstream audience, but this time, they brought a message too.
From front to back, Tulips was filled with bodies and anticipation for the sold-out show. Fans crowded the merch booth, lining up in front of Mannequin Pussy tour posters, shirts and thongs. The words on everyone’s breath being about how incredible this two-band lineup could be.
As the hour neared the 8 p.m. showtime, people packed into the front of the stage, anticipating Soul Glo’s explosive performance. To the tune of Chumbawamba’s “Tubthumping” the lights flickered, and as the song closed, the band emerged with laptops and set lists in hand.
This was a different Soul Glo than we had seen in past shows when the band was playing for smaller crowds at later times. Singer Pierce Jordan appeared sharp, as if this moment in the national spotlight, standing in front of a sold-out show — in Fort Worth of all places — had sparked a new level of professionalism in his command of the stage.
Jordan spent the show going back and forth from the front of the stage to manning the drum machine to give the band’s aggressive music an unsettling undertone like Death Grips, but somehow more amplified.
“Are y’all alive?” he asked the audience, responding to the crowd’s cheers with a blunt, “Prove it.”
The resulting mosh pit was good, but not satisfactory to Jordan, who continued demanding more from the audience, who in turn became more chaotic as the band sped through “(Quietly) Do The Right Thing” and its latest single.
During the band’s pristine delivery of hip-hop/hardcore crossover song “Driponomics,” Jordan turned the mic over to a fan who skillfully sang the song’s chorus: “Trickle down driponomics, yeah they're flipping the drip / My lil' cousin just a kid but he getting the shit (all day).”
The band ended with “Gold Chain Punk (whogonbeatmyass?)” with its opening cry “Can I live? Can I live? Can I live? Can I live?” drawing the voices of all in the audience. It was a chorus of voices and bodies as the pit moved in unison, concluding with the question and the threat, “Who gon’ beat my ass? Who gon’ beat my ass? Who the fuck gon’ beat my ass?”
It was a short set, but then again, hardcore sets usually are. With the amount of energy the band put into the show and drew out of the crowd, there was no question that 30-something minutes was enough.
As the Soul Glo crowd moved to the bars and the smoking sections, the Mannequin Pussy crowd moved in tight, watching and cheering on the band as it checked its sound.
Mannequin Pussy opted for dance tracks as its walk-in music, but the crowd was far too close together for such movement.
The lights went dark at 9:01 p.m., the blank stage drawing cheers and raised eyebrows as it stood empty for four minutes while a dance mix of Sneaker Pimps’ “Spin Spin Sugar” played.
Singer Marisa Dabice wore a flowing white dress with leggings and hot pink hot pants, moving across the stage with all smiles as the crowd managed to find space to move in even closer.
The band started softly with “I Don’t Know You,” a song from the new album that was not released as an early single, but the audience had already memorized every single word and sang along to let the band know.
Dabice explored her space on stage, drawing the cheers from the audience as the sweet romance of the set’s earliest songs disintegrated into mayhem with every passing tune. And the audience was there for the ride.
When the band got to its ode to regretfully drunk-dialing your ex, “Drunk II,” it wasn’t exactly clear why Dabice even needed to sing as every woman in the audience knew all the words by heart, “And do you remember the nights I called you up? I was so fucked up. I forgot we were broken up. I still love you, you stupid fuck!” It was the same for “Control” and “Softly.”
Near the set’s close, Dabice spoke to the audience, “A lot of people talk shit about Texas,” she said, “but y’all are not the government,” she assured the audience, inviting everyone to sing backup in the conclusion of “Loud Bark” by repeating the word “bite” in harmony.
“A lot of people talk shit about Texas,” Marisa Dabice told the audience at the sold-out show in Fort Worth, “but y’all are not the government.”
Vanessa Quilantan
But before everyone thought that Mannequin Pussy had gone soft, the tone changed, with Dabice dedicating “I Got Heaven” to everyone’s God-fearing parents. The audience would go on to chant along “And what if we stopped spinning? And what if we're just flat? And what if Jesus himself ate my fucking snatch?”
The cheers lingered. Dabice began to twirl the mic and the hardcore portion of the show had officially begun with “Of Her” and “Aching” — the two hardest tracks from the new album — and “Everything,” one of the rare earlier tracks the band would play.
The crowd was absolutely deafening during the band’s last song, letting out a scream that made the folks outside jump, the kind of scream that would alarm approaching enemies on any battlefield.
The band would exit the stage to Cher’s dance hit “Believe,” with the audience still shaken and breathless from what was actually a relatively short show.
As the merch line filled back up, it was clear that this was something more than just a regular hardcore show. This was a show from two fully developed bands capable of doing something that hardcore bands have failed at for decades — bring everybody together without all those pretentious hardcore credibility checks.
Hardcore is for everybody, even if it takes a little time to ease into.
