The band is called ‘92. Their friend Brillo, who was also born in 1992, became part of the overlap that gives “‘92 Till Infinity” its title. The new single from the Southern California band out today, takes that overlap straight into the title.
Jabril Ward grew up with Brillo. They went through high school together, ended up at prom as homies, and Brillo helped him pick out his first car.
Brillo was close with the band’s guitarist Cole as well, but for Ward the connection runs further back. “He was part of a whole group of us. We all came up together. A lot of our time was spent at his house, working on cars, going to parties, catching movies. Even after school we’d end up there just to hang out, sometimes even when he wasn’t there. He valued friendship a lot and was always someone trying to keep people connected.”
Brillo was around Antelope Valley Hardcore in his own way. “Not as someone on stage,” Ward says, “but just being around it, supporting it, and part of the energy behind it.” He was a fixture up front at shows even when he didn’t know the lyrics, just trying to be part of it.
The song didn’t start as a tribute. It was already in the live set when Brillo’s death began settling into the group. “It didn’t hit all at once,” Ward says.
“It kind of sat with me and that group of friends and slowly changed how we saw things over time.” Playing it night after night since around December 2025 changed what it meant.
“It stopped feeling like a concept and started feeling like something I was carrying with me. Not in a symbolic way, just in how I move now and how I think about things.”
The dark humor that ran through their friend group sits underneath the track too: “joking, quoting movies, not taking things too seriously on the surface, even when things were heavier underneath.”
That live history also opened the song up musically. By the time it got to recording, parts had been pulled back or rebuilt because they no longer carried the same weight. “Playing it live gave us a clearer understanding of what the song actually was, not just what we thought it was when we wrote it.”
’92 have always pulled from hardcore and 90s hip-hop, but “‘92 Till Infinity” leans into funk in a way the band hadn’t fully committed to before.
Bass player Quinn drove the shift. “He really went off on this one, and hearing what he brought to it made it clear we needed to open things up more instead of keeping everything boxed in.” Ward describes the funk current as something that had been there the whole time without being properly used: “This track was one of the first times it felt like we actually let that come through without second guessing it.”
The single is the fourth piece of what the band calls the Shattered Garden era, a sequence that wasn’t planned and revealed itself across releases.
“Cannibal” came from betrayal and anger, “something breaking because of someone close to you.” “Shattered Garden” moved into losing stability, “trying to hold onto something that’s already gone.” “Pariah” landed on survival, accepting isolation and figuring out how to exist in that space without losing yourself. “‘92 Till Infinity” is the step back. “It didn’t feel like reacting anymore. It felt more grounded, like stepping back and realizing what actually stays with you after everything else breaks.” A fifth and final song will close Shattered Garden later this year.
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Geography is folded into the band the same way the friend group is. Lancaster’s hardcore history is real but went quiet for a while, and Ward credits a younger wave for bringing the energy back and being open to ‘92‘s non-traditional sound: “Our sound isn’t the most traditional, but they’ve accepted it and even taken some influence from it, which we don’t take lightly.”
The desert shaped how they grew up. Long Beach is the other side, “a deeper rooted scene there with a lot of history,” more established and still evolving. Plugging into both keeps them from having to belong fully to one.
Over the past year ’92 have shared stages with Zulu, Desmadre, Load Tha 9, Price of Life, LIE, and Full Clip while moving through lineup shifts and rethinking direction.
They’ve been at this long enough that, as Ward puts it, the shift from younger kids in the scene to “now being what people would call uncs” is something they’re still figuring out. Hardcore as a whole feels, to him, like “a place none of us have really seen before. There’s a lot of new energy coming in, different sounds, different perspectives. We’re just trying to navigate that without losing what makes us us.”
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The band’s self-titled debut came out February 23, 2024, with Alex Estrada engineering, producing, and mixing it at The Pale Moon Ranch and Rollie Ulug handling the master.
Ward closes without dressing it up. “Right now it’s less about forcing growth and more about making sure what we’re building is honest and actually holds up over time. We’re just trying to stay present in it and contribute in a way that feels real.”
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