Svalbard: It's Hard To Have Hope

In order to properly convey my love of hard-hitting, abrasive, underground music, I’d need a far larger word count and the ability to use hyperlinks in this piece. Instead, I chose a particular album that was released last year, Svalbard’s It’s Hard To Have Hope. It stands up, not only as the band’s finest moment to date, a fact recognised by many of the scene’s major media outlets, but as a shining example of what hardcore can do and be at its very best.

For a genre that’s often pigeonholed as being formulaic and one-dimensional, hardcore has managed to weave a number of different elements and approaches into its tapestry. Svalbard are no slouches in this department. Their approach is a really interesting mix of the beautiful melodies and rich soundscapes of the recent wave of post-rock leaning black metal bands, but underpinned by a very straightforward pummelling rhythm section, keeping things grounded and the attack very in-your-face. There’s sweeping beauty and a thunderous punch, sometimes within the same guitar passage. The desperation in the vocal delivery, that passion, is mirrored by the ferocity with which their guitars are strummed, the drumming almost keeping them from being swept away. It’s an astounding effort into the canon of not only nasty hardcore from the UK, but abrasive music, fuck it, music as a whole.

Yet, what really does make this album stand ahead of the pack, what makes it so powerful and so vital, is the lyrics and their vocal delivery. It’s a political album, but it doesn’t meander in the empty sloganeering that can often mire bands. Here we have definite targets, ones that are very much current pressing concerns of people yet often go unscathed in lyrics. Unpaid internships and how they maintain the class divide in the job market, pedigree dog breeders and the cruelty meted out to both the dogs abandoned and left with defects, the problems within the music scene itself of sexual assault at gigs, to name a few. The lyrics don’t deal in vagueness and metaphor, they are very much straightforward punches to the gut. Perhaps this may make them heavy handed, but framed in the context of a scene which very often isn’t willing to put its morals where its mouth is, these are anvils which very much need dropping. The lyrics, so powerfully screamed by vocalist/guitarist Serena, are furious and necessary declarations of the humanity of those affected by the issues in the song. The woman who’s had her nudes leaked. The graduate shut out of the job market because they can’t afford to do an unpaid internship. The woman who’s been sexually assaulted at a gig and may drop out of the music scene altogether, something which happened to Serena as a youth. People who often exist to many people as only statistics, abstract entities in debates. This album doesn’t just reflect their pain, but firmly affirms their humanity and stands in solidarity with them.

When it comes to niche interests and the reactionary and dangerous behaviour that occurs within them, it is very easy to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It can very much seem an impossible task as an individual to change these things, and its easier to just duck out, a choice I wouldn’t begrudge people. Yet Svalbard buck against this by standing up and saying “no, we’re not gonna let this carry on”, they’re bucking against the bigots, against the predators, against the bros who just want to batter people smaller than them in a pit to leftover On Broken Wings riffs. They’re standing true to the hardcore ethos, that the world may be fucked and in need of torching to the ground, but we can build something better on it. It’s for that reason that It’s Hard To Have Hope isn’t just a brilliant album released last year, but something that makes me proud to be a fan of this music. This loud, angry, chaotic, violent music, it does have a heart, a firm beating heart. Stream It’s Hard To Have Hope, get it off their bandcamp, just give it a chance, it’s something truly special.