Initiate

As the smoke clears from the pandemic’s boom of kids learning about hardcore music and culture through social media, bands who have spent the greater part of the last 15 years planting their flag firmly in concrete as mainstays of the scene like Have Heart or Ceremony have come back to play shows bigger than ever, selling thousands of tickets in places like Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia and New York City. A band you will notice billed as support at a lot of these shows are Southern California’s Initiate. While some of these bands, part of the new wave of hardcore happening, struggle to find their footing in this strange new landscape of people moshing in their bedrooms, it’s obvious to anyone paying attention - Initiate stand-out.