“This is all very bleak.” Andrew Elter‘s opening note on “Collateral Damage” isn’t a warning label — it’s the point.
When we covered Tension last October around the “Drought” single, the Edmonton band were already framing their return as something more purposeful than a simple comeback.
A three-track EP, “High Tension,” had come out earlier that year. “Collateral Damage,” arriving in early 2026, is where the direction sharpens: four songs, four specific grievances, no room for ambiguity.
Tension — Elter on vocals, Ryan Bodner on bass, Robbie Cronin on guitar, Josh Bueckert on drums — came up on Trial, Earth Crisis, Cursed, and The Suicide File, and “Collateral Damage” moves in that tradition.
“A lot of the views expressed in this music, although heavy and, frankly, depressing, come from a place of wanting to see the world reach its potential,” Elter writes. “We hope to inspire the next generation the same way these bands did for us.”
The sound backs that up — d-beat-inflected hardcore drawing from Scandinavian-style aggression and ’70s hard rock, melodic hardcore structure, death metal undertones. Guitar-driven and unapologetic, with an underlying moodiness that keeps the tension feeling as psychological as it is physical.
“It’s funny because the message we all got growing up was, ‘When you get older and have more responsibility, you’re going to lean more conservative,'” Elter says. “Now we have houses, kids, and an extra decade of experience and we’ve all basically arrived at the opposite conclusion. One notable difference is that we do focus way less on organized religion and far more on the bigger picture stuff. No war but class war, y’know?”
Recorded and mixed by Lealand Grauwiler, mastered by New Alliance East. Artwork by Emily Bueckert and Josh Bueckert, photo by Andrew Elter. Between “High Tension,” “Drought,” and now this EP, the band has kept the emphasis firmly on writing and releasing — self-reliance as practice, live shows still pending, further recordings already being planned.
“Eye For An Eye” opens the set and doesn’t take long to find its target. “From the losers marching in Charlottesville with tiki torches to Nick Fuentes spouting openly pro-Hitler rhetoric, the world has changed,” Elter writes. “Less than a hundred years ago we fought a war about this very issue and we’re watching it bubble up again. We’re just hoping to add our voices to that resistance.”
“Borrowed Time” addresses a decade of environmental damage — cities burning, extreme weather events, displaced wildlife, losses that won’t reverse. “It’s going to take intention and it’s going to take abandoning some level of profit motive and holding corporations accountable,” Elter says.
“Not Running” lands on class. “Agency, something we genuinely need as individuals, has been commodified,” Elter writes. The cost of security in the first world carries guilt: an economy built on exploitation and destabilization running beneath the surface of everyday life. “It’s a call to action from every working class person to recognize what is happening around us, and what we’re complicit in.”
The closer, “Carrion Feeders,” is where the EP’s title earns its meaning. Written months before current events made it feel prophetic, Elter is direct: “At this very moment, the United States and Israel are waging an illegal war on Iran. None of this is to secure peace or create lasting security. This is for profit; It’s always for profit.”
“Collateral damage” lands its full weight here: “Every death they refer to as ‘collateral damage’ is an admittance that we are nothing more than a necessary cost for their ambitions.”
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