Devil in the Details

posted in: Artist Features • Rock

Stateside isn’t a band for the faint of heart. Made up of Mike Tarry, Chip Su, Jeff Meiers, Phil Zepeda, and Jeff Zager, the group crafts explosive hardcore that raises the hackles. Bridges Worth Burning combines serrated guitars, thunderous drums, and the guttural heaving of Tarry for polyrhythmic, bipolar screamo you can feel in your solar plexus. Like singers Mike Patton and Chester Bennington, Tarry tempers his barbaric bellows with melodic, plaintive singing. On The Eve surging guitars and drums create a tempest over which Tarry moans, I’m wasting away. But things aren’t always so bleak. Make Your Move is a motivational anthem about the city that never sleeps wrapped up in roiling guitars and semiautomatic drums. Maybe lyrics like Broadway’s alive and calling me home and hardcore make strange bedfellows, but even the devil gets to take a day off.