“I genuinely feel like I am going crazy, on like a daily basis.” That’s State Power vocalist Stefan, not dressing it up. “Schizoscene” — out today, fast, melodic, thrash-edged hardcore with a nasty breakdown — is the Utrecht band at their most vulnerable, a contrast to their usual confrontational stance.
The track is the first single from “Hyperstition,” the band’s debut full-length, due August 28 on Parasocial Records — their own new DIY imprint.
Stefan continues: “Most people, I think, can sense that their brains are struggling to keep up with whatever we are living right now. We can sense our communities are disintegrating, the humanity in our interactions stripped away as the rich and powerful find new ways to monetize every second of our existence. Sometimes, I lose hope we are ever escaping this constantly accelerating death spiral.”
The album title comes from Nick Land — philosopher, 90s coiner of the term, now a far-right shell of himself.
Hyperstition, in Land’s definition, is an idea that becomes self-fulfilling through its own existence. Stefan’s example: Volodymyr Zelensky produced and starred in the sitcom “Servant of the People” as president of Ukraine, a role he would actualize in 2019.
Land later described AI as a “hyperstitional engine” — a positive feedback loop where hype drives adoption drives development drives hype, accelerating toward an endpoint in which, as Stefan reads it, humans are the fuel burned up in service of AI singularity. Land thinks we should just let it happen.
He is also, Stefan notes, a piece of shit who went crazy from smoking too much meth. But the diagnosis might have been partly right.
That’s the loop State Power are circling on this record. “You’ll own nothing and be happy” — the meme your boomer uncle keeps reposting.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, recently: “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.” Rent eats your paycheck; friends leave town because the city priced them out; the subscription economy quietly becomes the only economy while Elon Musk climbs toward becoming the world’s first trillionaire. Stefan ends up somewhere unexpected with all of it: “I relate with your family member, not because I am far-right (quite the opposite haha), but because I get scared too. I wrote this song about it.”
The vulnerability is what gives the song its weight. It’s got the kind of energy melodic hardcore was running on in the early 2000s — Paint It Black, Ruiner — but the production lands differently, the emotional mix has shifted, and the anxiety underneath feels specifically now rather than retrofitted. There’s a Comeback Kidvibe and a chorus to sing along to and a breakdown made for the pit. It works on the bike, in the car, and best at a show where the PA is louder than it should be.
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Two years in, they’ve moved fast. Two EPs, festival dates including Jera On Air, and early praise from Norman Brannon’s Anti-Matter for debut single “Gates of Hell.”
Brannon on more recent work: “I already knew that this was absolutely the hardcore song that I have listened to the most this year, bar none. I’ve played it for friends. I’ve played it for bandmates. There’s just something about this song that excites me…” Patrick Kindlon of Drug Church and Axe to Grind hit similar notes: “I thought that this was just so well executed. Oh yeah, I know people are going to like this.” DCxPC Live went for direct comparison points — Paint It Black, Ruiner, tight and fast hardcore with just enough melody to pull you in.
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State Power describe “Hyperstition” as “pure love, in its most aggressive form.” The album is out August 28 via Parasocial Records. “Schizoscene” is streaming now, and pre-orders are up through the band’s web shop.
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