Three letters that have done real work in hardcore: PMA. Positive Mental Attitude. Bad Brains and HR pulled it out of Napoleon Hill’s “Think and Grow Rich” and turned it into something closer to a spiritual posture — a way to stay upright in a scene that has always flirted with nihilism.
It’s shorthand for a certain kind of hardcore kid: the one who treats showing up, refusing to go numb, and doing the work as forms of resistance.
Modern Guilt build their debut LP “Mind The Trap” around it. The record lands March 14, 2026 via Quarantined and Monument Records in Sweden, Refuse Records across Europe, and Dropping Bombs Records in the US.
Today we’re stoked to give you Modern Guilt’s playlist of favorite PMA hardcore tracks.
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We covered their single “No Peace” in December, where Marcus Källman traced the full lineage of Swedish youth crew and how four musicians from Eyes Shut, Subject to Change, Division of Laura Lee, Anchor, Pablo Matisse, Out of Vogue, and Sharp Tongues ended up sharing a Gothenburg practice space.
That’s the lineup: Peter on vocals, with Thomas, Mattias, and Per. A demo and an EP came before this. “Mind The Trap” is the step up.
Ten tracks, around fifteen minutes. Recorded live at Welfare Sounds Studios in Gothenburg in August 2025, mixed by Per Stålberg, mastered by Brad Boatright at Audiosiege in Portland.
The record sits at the intersection of early ’80s East Coast hardcore and late ’80s/early ’90s West Coast hardcore — Negative Approach, Youth of Today, Cro-Mags, and Uniform Choice all leaving fingerprints.
“Unlike our earlier releases we wrote everything for this album together in the practice space which broadened the influences and were able to bring the best of each of us into it. This also got us ready to record everything live in the studio – to capture the the vibe intended in punk and hardcore,” Peter says.
PMA runs through the record as a discipline. It’s easy to drown in cynicism in 2026. The political climate is bleak, democracy is crumbling in real time, every news cycle arrives worse than the last. Modern Guilt’s move is to lean harder into what they can actually control.
“Our attitude in terms of writing lyrics was always about trying to Inspire – In a very simple and positive maner, often times reflecting on what was my mental state was like when I’ve been trying and failing or starting things that never reached the finish line,” Peter explains, pointing to a line from “Plug and Play”: “As I contemplate, Why did I hesitate I found my template just plug and play. Plug and play, plug and play – My PMA.”
He keeps circling the same idea: change at any scale begins with starting. “Another example and things I come back to is that the only way to make a change – For yourself, for the ones close to you, your community or in a global aspect is about geting started and not keep postponing things. Get shit done, keep a positive mindset.” The album opener puts it plainer: “You’ll never win if you never begin, I’ve got progress on my mind – Always.”
Peter’s careful to separate PMA from the version that gets sold as toxic positivity. “Important to consider is that PMA is easy to misread as naive cheerfulness – head down, ignore the pain, pretend it’s all fine. It’s not. Raging at injustice and believing in change are not opposites. Real PMA holds both at once.”
His own working definition is less precious: “Do what you can to not be part of the problem, stay positive and influence people to do better and stand up agains oppression in a time that’s messed up in too many ways.”
To sit alongside the record, Modern Guilt put together a playlist of their favorite PMA hardcore tracks — a companion pointing to the tradition they came up on.
“Mind The Trap” is out March 14.
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