In a world that often thrives on hate and self-deprecation, Denver-based hardcore punk outfit Destiny Bond want you to feel the love. Fresh off the release of their sophomore full-length album The Love through Convulse Records, Destiny Bond have carved their own space in the hardcore landscape through their raw sonic expression and undying devotion to the DIY scene.
Directly following the band’s 2023 debut studio album Be My Vengeance, as well as two demos released in 2021 and 2022, The Love finds Destiny Bond honing in on their iconic ‘80s hardcore-inspired sound. Through caffeinated ragers like “Peace As A Punchline,” “Can’t Kill The Love,” and “Debt Perception,” the group conveys both unbridled rage and honesty to spread the ultimate message of love’s permanence through strife and hardship. With an artistry that embraces and exudes self-empowerment, vulnerability, and trans acceptance, Destiny Bond are as loud and unrelenting as love itself.
Ahead of the release of The Love, Destiny Bond embarked on a fall tour supporting Glare alongside Jivebomb and Cloakroom. This December, they will head out to Japan for a run of shows, concluding the tour with a performance at New Realm Fest in Tokyo. These shows in Japan, as well as the arrival of their new record, mark an exciting era for the band.
“It’s the most true Destiny Bond thing that has existed to date,” vocalist Cloe Madonna says. “We had recorded the album, at first, last August, before deciding to re-record it and add some stuff. So, from that full process of a year ago to now, it just feels like, finally, we get to share this.”
Sonically, The Love is a cohesive follow-up to Be My Vengeance. Maintaining the band’s signature thrash-influenced approach to hardcore, The Love delivers everything there is to love about Be My Vengeance with even more confidence and brutality.
“It’s growing on that foundation we built sonically, but there’s still a lot of the rocking parts and the fast urgency,” Madonna says. “And then thematically it’s also an expansion on [Be My Vengeance], as, instead of a call for vengeance and to be avenged, it’s a call that the love that exists in the spaces we get to be in can’t actually be killed anyways. It’s going to outlast us, because these ideas that we fight for in our community have been around for so long.”
Destiny Bond’s latest release arrives at a time when certain groups, namely the LGBTQ+ community, are being intentionally targeted and discriminated against by political institutions. However, Madonna says her freedom within hardcore spaces has never burned brighter.
“As a trans woman in America, it doesn’t even need to be stated, it’s just a really, really high-pressure time for us and a time where we’re maybe checking over our shoulder a little bit more even now,” she says. “But it’s also impacted my experience where I’ve gotten to exist freely in this subculture where it honestly doesn’t really touch me or the people that I love that often when we’re together. So it’s kind of lifting that up and being like, ‘Hey, this sounds like love.’”
She adds, “We all know about love, and it sounds like this fluffy thing, but it’s also the thing that makes you fight for the person next to you and makes you really go above and beyond to give them a space with you, because you know that love doesn’t exist a lot in mainstream societal behavior. Essentially, we have something special in that love. It has more of an edge than I think a lot of people realize, because it’s what calls you to arms for the people that you love.”
Similar to love itself—something that calls both a desire for tenderness and an urgency to protect others – Destiny Bond’s music embraces a balance of ferocity and care. While the compositions offer the perfect soundtrack to bodies slamming against one another in the pit, the lyrics themselves are optimistic and encouraging.
“In our personal lives, in Destiny Bond, we are all pretty gentle and soft with each other, and I would say pretty positive people,” Madonna says. “And it’s the hard-hitting nature of hardcore that’s still just as much a part of it, because the aggression can be a productive energy. You can funnel that aggression into things that are ultimately positive and full of love. I feel like there’s this current idea that these things are separate, that the tough hardcore is different than the positive, but it’s not. We’re all going into these rooms because we love it and because we want to dance and get that energy out. And if it is aggressive energy or if it’s gentle energy, there’s still the love in that energy.”
Whether a hardcore act leans more soft or more rough, Madonna says what matters most for an artist is one thing: authenticity.
“It needs to be you,” she says. “It needs to be your story. And a lot of people in hardcore punk have stories that are hard, aggressive, darker, or less vulnerable… I haven’t even had to fight to be comfortable or convince people to let me in because I’ve had people that I wouldn’t expect to connect with the band come up and say they really got it, even though we’re from different walks of life where they might write harder songs because they just saw the genuine heart of what we do is the same no matter the language or who’s saying it.”
Authenticity bleeds throughout The Love, as Destiny Bond deliver 10 unforgettably aggressive tracks that explore struggle, grief, and hardship. A call to arms for those wanting to protect what they’ve fought so hard to establish, The Love stands tall as the epitome of inclusive subculture and unbridled compassion.
“I would hope that [fans] can take away that hardcore punk can be just as effective as it ever has been, just being a rallying cry for the people who need it, and that they can maybe learn to help themselves so that they can help the people around them better,” Madonna says. “The love starts within yourself. In ‘Can’t Kill the Love,’ there’s a line that’s like, ‘Good people can be hard to find until you find them in yourself.’ As many cliches as there are about it, you’re really going to struggle if you don’t have a love for yourself to be able to do anything for anybody else.”
The Love is out now and you can order it from Convulse Records. Follow Destiny Bond on Instagram and Twitter for future updates.
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