Jeremy Walker from Fire In The Mountains Fest

Steve Looker has been playing guitar in Morning Again since the Florida straight edge and vegan scene of the mid-90s, a band that helped define metallic hardcore on Revelation Records. Before that, he played in xOutcastx alongside future Morning Again vocalist Kevin Byers, then left to join sister band Culture, which set the whole story in motion. In this conversation, we talk about growing up in that scene, the long path from the original run to the Survival Instinct era, writing songs from a distance, and what life looks like outside the band. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS

Jared Hart grew up in North Jersey in a family of art teachers, and it shows in how he’s approached music for more than two decades. Between The Scandals, Mercy Union, his solo work and running Mt. Crushmore Records, he’s built a career the way a lot of people in this world do, by hand and on the road. In this conversation, Jared talks about coming up in North Jersey, what it means to be raised in a household that takes making things seriously, and why Germany has become such a meaningful place for him as a touring musician. It’s a conversation about where you come from, the rooms that take you in, and the long drives in between. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS

Rise and Fall's Bjorn Dossche joins the show to talk about leading Wrong Man into their Deathwish full length debut, and the conversation goes deeper than expected. He breaks down why the mix is where a record actually lives or dies, not just the songs underneath it. He talks about watching hardcore cycle back around on itself generation after generation, and why that's never bothered him. And he opens up about mortality being the unlikely thing that pulled Rise and Fall back together after all these years. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS

Ari Katz has spent over three decades inside hardcore and punk, first as the singer of Lifetime, the New Brunswick band that quietly rewired what a hardcore song could be about, then through Zero Zero, and later behind the counter at Black Cat Records. On this episode of 100 Words Or Less, Ari looks backward: the DFA scene, the New York hardcore bands that set the bar in the late '80s and early '90s, and what it took for a band from Jersey to write something personal in a scene built on toughness. A conversation about influence, lineage, and the records that made this whole thing worth doing. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS

Bryan Garris, vocalist of Knocked Loose, one of the most talked-about hardcore bands to come out of the last decade. He first sat down on the show in 2017, when the band was still an "upstart" fielding as much online debate as praise. Nine years later, they've released a Grammy-nominated record, toured arenas with Metallica and Gojira, collaborated across genres (Poppy, Chris Motionless, Denzel Curry), and become one of the rare hardcore bands to break through to a genuinely mainstream audience, controversy and all. Along the way there's also been real physical toll: a van accident on tour and a bout of Bell's Palsy that he pushed through mid-run. This conversation revisits where he started and checks in on what's changed. PRE-ORDER THE BOOK FOR 100 WORDS OR LESS