“Struck a nerve” runs just over a minute and doesn’t waste any of it. It’s the first move from Step Below this year, dropped digitally via Bandcamp, and it sets the tone for what they describe as a three–track EP coming in spring under the title “… you let it ruin you”, followed by a full-length planned for summer.
Step Below exist in a slightly unusual space for a hardcore band. They’re based across the UK, loosely centered around London, and operate more as a shared outlet than a traditional gigging unit.
As they put it, “we have been around for a few years but have yet to play a show yet. That’s how we want it to be.” For now, the band is studio-focused, low-key by choice, with live plans left open-ended and dependent on whether there’s real demand once the LP is out.
Musically, (“Struck a Nerve”) lands somewhere between direct, angry hardcore and something more grounded and unforced. The track balances a raw, almost native punk aggression with a distinctly underground drum sound — the snare carrying a murky reverb that gives the song a slight tunnel effect. The groove turns restless in the second half, circling tightly enough to feel dizzying rather than climactic. It’s short, but not throwaway.
The band points to influences like Hatebreed, Malevolence, Expire and Nasty, mixed with what they call “that UKHC grit with some more mainstream influences like NYHC bounce and some death metal influences.” You can hear that push and pull in how the song moves: blunt, physical, but not chaotic for the sake of it.
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Lyrically, there’s no warm-up here. It kicks the door in straight away with (“Negative mind / Suffocates your kind”) and just stays locked on that thought. The whole song keeps circling the same point — how sitting in negativity starts to feel normal, then slowly turns into something you do to yourself. As the band puts it, “people nowadays love being negative.” It hit their singer on a bad day, hard enough that this track came out of it, written as a straight pushback rather than a reflection.
Lines like (“Only see the bad / Choose to bury the good”) or (“Miss me with that crap / You’re not misunderstood”) don’t feel aimed at the world at large. They sound like someone drawing a line, shutting a door, opting out of a conversation they’re tired of having.
The hook — (“Struck a nerve / In telling you the truth”) — isn’t selling honesty as some fix-all. It’s more about friction, about saying something that’s going to rub the wrong way no matter what. And when it drops into (“I’ve tried and I’ve failed / Know I’ll never succeed”), there’s no big gesture in it, no self-pity. It just sits there, flat and heavy, pointing at how that kind of negativity doesn’t spread outward first — it eats the person holding onto it.
“Effectively, this is our declaration that contagious negativity is toxic, and we will not let it spread and thrive.” The decision to keep the song short mirrors that intent. “The song is short and to the point just like the message we intend to share.”
There’s still some space to tighten things up — a bit more weight down low, a cleaner split between the parts — but none of that feels like a problem, just unfinished business.
The spine of it is already solid. “Struck a Nerve” sounds like a line being drawn. As an opening move for 2026, it makes it pretty clear what Step Below want to put into the room, and what kind of noise they’re happy to leave outside.
