There’s no slow introduction with Standover. The New Zealand five-piece doesn’t ease into anything—they tear the door off its hinges and drag the listener straight into the chaos. Their debut, …When A Clenched Fist is No Longer an Option, out June 9 as an exclusive MP3 download, is as blunt and punishing as the name implies. Today, we’re stoked to give you an exclusive first listen in its entirety.
Formed from fragments of some of New Zealand’s most unrelenting hardcore outfits—Forced to Submit, Damaged, Demonstrate, Saving Grace, Vicissitude—Standover isn’t playing a nostalgia card or trying to relive old scenes. This is a fresh wound. Every riff feels like it’s been torn from something personal. Concrete-heavy, straight to the throat.
The band doesn’t overexplain their message. The music itself communicates enough—blast beats that hit like a pipe to the ribcage, feedback dragging across the tracks like someone grinding metal on concrete, and vocals that don’t ask for your attention, they demand it.
Still, they make their intention clear in a rare statement that doesn’t try to romanticize anything: “We’ve managed to culminate many decades of life experience into this album. The bad, the ugly, the violent aspects we’ve all encountered along our way and worked them into an uncompromising, unapologetic, unhinged piece of music that reflects our disdain and disrespect of everything we have had to claw our way through.”
There’s no metaphor here. No overthought symbolism. Just confrontation. The band describes the album as holding a piece of all of them—resentment, pain, trauma, and the survival that came after. The result is a sonic posture that doesn’t bend or explain itself.
“We stand as one unit, we won’t back down, we’re ready, so bring your best and biggest to battle.”
The album hits hard, says what it means, and leaves a mark. It’s built for the floor, for the fists, and for anyone who’s ever had to walk through the fire and keep going.
