“The End Of War” was already a warning shot. “The Cry of Nature” sounds like Escalate stepping over the line and making the whole thing uglier on purpose — faster, meaner, stripped to impact.
The Veszprém band have built their whole identity around that kind of directness. Formed in 2020 as Hungary’s first fully vegan straight edge band, Escalate use hardcore like a weapon, aimed squarely at speciesism, oppression, and the kind of everyday complacency that lets all of it keep rolling. Their new five-song EP, “The Cry of Nature,” sharpens that idea instead of dressing it up: louder, heavier, more focused.
For vocalist Laszlo Meszaros, the headspace behind the record is not abstract politics or some neatly packaged message. It is accumulated anger. “After being vegan straight edge and veganarchist for well over a decade, the hopeless rage just builds inside you,” he says. “You see that people know exactly what they are doing, and they don’t give a fuck.”
That feeling runs through the title track, premiering here ahead of its April 1 streaming release. Escalate picked this one for a reason. “This track hits hard,” the band say. “Not that the others don’t but this is probably our favorite.”
It also gets to the center of what this EP is trying to do. Meszaros talks about reading animal rights literature dating back to 1791 and realizing that the warning has been there for more than 200 years, ignored the whole time in the name of progress. Friday night distraction on one side, slaughterhouses, war, and technological arrogance on the other. He sees the same logic behind all of it: “everything that breathes exists to be conquered, dissected, consumed, or erased.”
That is the nerve “The Cry of Nature” keeps hitting. Escalate come from militant ’90s XVX hardcore, but they are not interested in reenactment. The sound is current, blunt, and built to land immediately. There is no soft entrance, no wasted motion, just a band locking into a single idea and driving it forward until it leaves a mark.
Since releasing their debut full-length, “Consequences,” on New Age Records, Escalate have spent a lot of time on the road, touring across Europe and playing through most of the continent.
The songs carry the same commitment they bring to every show: veganism, straight edge, and hardline DIY ethics without compromise.
Meszaros puts the new EP in even plainer terms. “All of these feelings that keep circulating in us — the anger, the grief — are channeled into the songs of The Cry of Nature. Because what we do to the animals and the natural world, we do to ourselves, and we want to put an end to this destruction by whatever means necessary.”
Escalate are Laszlo Meszaros on vocals, Adam Horvath on drums and vocals, Akos Nagy on bass, and Andras Borzsonyi and Andras Timar on guitars.
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