Lauren spends her working days in social media marketing. When she finishes, she’s often still scrolling, fully aware of what it’s doing to her and struggling to stop. It’s an experience that has worked its way into “Necessary Evil“, the new six-track EP from New Jersey hardcore punks Duel, whose music is almost as relentless as the things their vocalist is trying to get away from.
Fast, angry, and barely leaving a moment to catch your breath, it packs quite a lot into twelve minutes. There are a few exhausting slowdowns along the way, though most of the time the band just keep charging. It reminds me a little of the breathless feeling I used to get during my big Verse obsession. Different vibe, similar physical exhaustion. The sort of hardcore that can leave you charged up for the whole week.
Duel have only been around since the winter of 2023, and “Necessary Evil” is already a pretty big step away from the simple punk songs they started writing. Guitarist Kate and vocalist Lauren originally wanted to make something fast and fun, with riffs people could move to and words Lauren had been writing long before she knew how to put them into songs. Their first material leaned into backbeats and d-beat punk. Now the arrangements have grown more complicated, and they’re finding different ways to work melody into the aggression without losing that original rush.
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The lyrics have kept their personal edge. Lauren once called them “therapeutic rants written into poems”, which is a good description of how she approaches subjects that are difficult to get out of her head. There’s the endless scrolling, the state of American politics, the pressure of trying to keep your beliefs intact and the rather unpleasant feeling that people are constantly making life harder for themselves.
One of those recurring thoughts gave the EP its name. Lauren had been thinking about how humans seem to need one problem after another to give life some kind of purpose. It reminded her of the Hero’s Journey in storytelling, where an obstacle is followed by another and things are never allowed to remain peaceful for very long.
“Itโs hard for me to put something like this into a cohesive response, but bear with me as I list a few thoughts that whirl around in my brain.”
“Weโre programmed to approach life that way. Things can never sit still. We crave a continuum of problems to solve. This thought is where the idea for our title came from.”
That restlessness runs through the record, though some of its most direct moments come from the very ordinary experience of staring at a phone long after you meant to put it away.
“Scythe” is Lauren’s most personal account of that habit. Working with social media every day has left her wondering how much of her own time and attention she’s given up to something she increasingly finds depressing.
“Iโm convinced I have an addiction to it because once my work day ends, Iโm still scrolling through it. It is such a vicious cycle that I wish never had to start. Itโs taken so much from us all. I often wonder how different the world would be today without it. I wonder who Iโd be without it.”
She knows it’s made her less productive and affected her mood, yet the pull is still there. The lyrics put that frustration into the language of cables, batteries, boredom and convenience. “Convenience is a sin” is one of the lines that gets straight to her problem with it all. She’d like the song to encourage people to become a little more mentally present, herself included.
Kate has some equally strong opinions about where all of this is heading. She’s frustrated by how casually people accept spending hours on their phones, even as corporations actively design platforms to keep them there, harvest their information and feed them more advertising. She believes that treating the whole thing as an ordinary failure of self-discipline lets the companies responsible off far too easily.
“The direction that tech oligarchs are driving our society is inherently anti-human. The fact that itโs so ingrained in every part of our lives is very frustrating. It shouldnโt be impossible to participate in modern society without having an email linked to every purchase you make. And fuck Flock.”
There’s a funny little detail behind “Scythe”, too. Drummer Creasen wrote the entire instrumental himself, and the others barely touched the arrangement. He came up with it on a day off work caused by a snowstorm and sent the demo around under the title “Blizzard”. The name never really went away. Within Duel, everybody still calls the song “Blizzard”.
The band have already released it as the first public taste of the EP. You can hear “Scythe” on Bandcamp.
“Naive” has a similar internal nickname, though its writing took a different route. Bret, who plays bass, brought a riff into rehearsal one day and the others immediately liked it. They built the song around his idea, and the instrumental stayed pretty close to that first version. To this day, they call it “Bret’s song”.
Lauren had to work much harder on the words. It was the most difficult song on the EP for her to write, mainly because of the structure. She went through multiple drafts, deleting them and starting again until the lyrics finally sat where she wanted them. The finished version deals with frustration, self-doubt and overconsumption, including the wonderful line, “Iโd rather scream than be sold one more thing”.
The anger gets considerably more direct on “Glare”, where Lauren wanted to write something particularly fast and punk-driven. Her frustration came from watching people continue to support the Trump administration, something she finds increasingly difficult to understand.
Kate has her own view of the song’s political anger. To her, the words are directed at people who seem to have absorbed a completely different understanding of reality through the media they consume, leaving conversations about politics trapped in contradictory arguments and seemingly endless excuses for the administration.
“Itโs hard to watch people get brainwashed into following this administration.”
She singles out the line “See it for what it is, wake up, wake up from this”, hearing in it the desperation of somebody trying to get through to another person who refuses to recognise what they’re seeing.
“Listening to a Trump supporter jump through hoops to defend him is exhausting and mind boggling that they believe the things theyโre saying.”
Musically, “Glare” also gave Duel their first recorded guest vocalist. Jackie Betancourt from Come Mierda contributed from California, sending over a vocal part recorded through the voice memo app on her phone. Mike Morello, who handled the recording and production for the EP, worked Jackie’s contribution into the final track.
Lauren described the whole process as happening through “the voice memo app and a prayer”. She’s a big admirer of Jackie and Come Mierda, so getting that part into the record meant a lot to her.
Mike was involved in considerably more unusual recording work on “Nowhere to Run“.
Lauren wrote the song for survivors, addressing the complicated process of healing after being hurt and trying to find some way to live normally in a place that still offers no real protection. She leaves the nature of that harm open.
“This one is for the survivors. It discusses the complexity of healing and rediscovering how to exist within a space that wonโt protect you. Confronting the disillusion.”
Kate already had backing screams on the track when Lauren came up with another idea during a session reviewing the mixes. She wanted to add some subtle, horror-film-like screaming in the background.
Mike was up for giving it a try, so Lauren and Kate ended up screaming into a microphone in his basement studio for almost an hour. The resulting parts made it onto the finished recording and have become one of Lauren’s favourite details on the EP.
The recording sessions took place at Mike’s home studio in Hillsborough, New Jersey. Creasen had been friends with him for some time, and they’d already wanted to work together on music. Once the whole band got involved, Mike was happy to work through their suggestions, including plenty of small changes to the mixes.
He sometimes returned revised versions within 24 hours, staying up late to make sure everybody was happy with the results. Lauren also credits him with helping her get past some of her shyness about recording vocals, which made trying those strange extra screams a lot easier.
For Kate, the recording process was another indication of how much Duel have changed since their earliest songs. Everybody is more comfortable in the studio now, and they’re pushing themselves harder with the writing.
When the band began, Lauren had never been in a group before. She was still figuring out vocals and learning how songs came together. She and Kate had both wanted to play in a band, and those first rehearsals were a way to start doing it together. Their first show eventually happened on 5 October 2024.
“We began as a pretty simply-written fast punk band with more of a focus on classic back beats and d-beat style punk, as heard on our demo. I would probably describe it now as fairly โelementaryโ sounding songs. But youโve gotta start somewhere!”
The two still enjoy the same basic things that brought them together. Kate wants to write riffs people can move to, and she’s always keen to hear what Lauren comes back with lyrically.
“The most important part to me has always been the lyrics, Iโm always excited to see what Lauren will write. She has a special way of articulating the collective anxieties that come along with living in this world.”
They’ve also been letting themselves try some different arrangements. The opening track, simply called “Intro”, is one of the clearest examples. Lauren considers it the most experimental piece they’ve written so far, with a strange, slightly spooky and melodic character that the band wanted to use as an unexpected way into the EP.
They’d been holding onto it since before they even recorded their October 2025 single. It finally found its place at the beginning of “Necessary Evil”, giving the record a different opening from the fast punk they were writing when they started.
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At the other end is “Under Pressure (Cut it)“, which Lauren sees as a nod to the more traditional hardcore they love. Creasen contributes guest vocals, and the band work some melodic ideas into the heavier riffs. The song also ends with a piano part by Matt Degnan of Flatwounds.
Matt had sent Kate a video of a piano piece he’d come up with. She thought it would make a good ending for the EP, played it to the others, and they agreed to use it. That small addition gives the final track an unusual finish, especially after most of the preceding twelve minutes have been spent at such a frantic pace.
The four members have learned to leave room for each other’s ideas. Lauren brings the words, Kate the guitar, Bret the bass and Creasen the drums, though “Scythe” and “Naive” show how easily a complete song can begin with one person bringing something into rehearsal.
Away from the record, Duel have been getting involved in a New Jersey hardcore community where people are doing much more than playing shows.
One of the places Lauren cares about most is Cinco De Mayo in New Brunswick. The restaurant has become a regular home for DIY punk and hardcore gigs, thanks to owner Fernando and his family, who open their space to bands almost every week. Lauren is equally appreciative of the neighbours and local community who have accepted the shows, as well as the people putting in the work to book them.
Kate points out that many venues don’t stay around for very long. Cinco has been one of the steadiest places Duel have played, and both members know how much the scene depends on people willing to keep something like it going.
There’s no shortage of bands worth following in their corner of New Jersey. Lauren mentions Lucky You, Manik, Defy You and 50 Days at Iliam. Kate adds Depressionista, along with the work of No Punk Time Promo and Bimbo Violence. She also recommends Unwind Records and Comics on the Asbury Park boardwalk.
The people making those gigs happen are part of a wider conversation Duel have been having about hardcore and the values they want it to keep.
Lauren wants shows to be safer places, both physically and emotionally. She talks about bringing back the principles she believes hardcore was built on and about people showing respect for one another, helping their friends and giving support to somebody who might be struggling.
Kate has seen some good examples of that around New Jersey. Safe Scene NJ provide harm-reduction resources at DIY shows, including information about overdose prevention, ICE awareness and birth control. Joey DePrizio from Defy You also makes a point of telling people at gigs that if they’re feeling hopeless or alone, they can send the band a message and he’ll talk with them.
“I often see examples like this of people in our scene providing actual tangible outlets for people to seek help and community. This really goes to show that itโs a community thing and no one is above it. Donโt ever think youโre any better or more important than the people around you.”
It makes sense that Lauren wants people to find something comforting in her lyrics, even when the songs themselves are furious. She hopes somebody hearing them might recognise their own experience, find a different perspective or simply feel a little less alone.
The cover of “Necessary Evil” carries some of that same uneasy thinking. Ryan Evans created the artwork, although the piece already existed when Lauren came across it on social media. She was immediately drawn to its combination of brightly coloured, childlike pencil textures and disturbing imagery.
She showed it to Kate, and they both pictured it as the EP cover straight away. Ryan gave them permission to use the piece, which had never been designed specifically for Duel.
For Lauren, the rainbow brings to mind the familiar saying about better things coming after difficult times. Her own interpretation leaves the possibility of something worse waiting just ahead.
“The rainbow is there, but evil is always on the horizon.”
Kate had one more thing to say when given the chance to leave any message she wanted ahead of the release.
“Fuck Robert Kraft and Fuck AI”
Duel release “Necessary Evil” on 2 November 2026 through RTF Records, with the six-track EP available on streaming services and CD through RTF Records. The public single “Scythe” is already available on Bandcamp.
