Hardcore and punk aren't genres that necessarily celebrate change. It’s not like the music is stagnant; far from it! It’s more that the tried and true is rewarded while anything new, anything different, is greeted with a quizzical eyebrow and the spoken or unspoken question of: “Is this good? Can you mosh to it?"

If there was anyone in Philadelphia who could answer those queries with expert authority it’s George Hirsch and Dave Walling. Though really, you don’t even need to ask them. Just put on the debut album by Staticlone, the band they started at the tail end of their previous outfit Blacklisted, and you’ll find all the answers you need.

“I started going to hardcore shows in 1995,” singer and guitarist Hirsch says. “So the fact that I’m still here right now talking about a band that I’m a part of that wrote a hardcore record in 2024 means that we’re pretty committed. I don’t think that could be denied at this point even if we wanted to.” Outside of Blacklisted, which drummer Jeff Ziga was also part of for many years, Staticlone claims a lineage that includes Shark Attack, Damage, Armalite, and countless other standouts as well as work with some hardcore heavyweights like Converge and Nails.

On Better Living Through Static Vision you can hear Hirsch, bassist Walling, and Ziga channel everything from crust – of both the English and American varieties – to metal and of course the punk and hardcore they’ve all been steeped in for decades. As he unapologetically puts it: “I’m a victim of what I listen to and so are Dave and Jeff.” In the sum of those parts Staticlone follows the path of Disfear, Wolfbrigade, Inepsy, and other groups that combine d-beat ferocity with rock n’ roll riffs.

While Staticlone actually started back in 2019, the band didn’t really coalesce and become more real until a couple years later when they put out a demo tape. Well that depends on your definition of ‘real’ since they waited until 2024 to finally play their first gig. This was partially due to Hirsch living in Chicago until recently and also because of the pandemic but really it was just that by design it was conceived as more project and less live act.

“George and I have been working together for quite a long time and whatever band it is, anytime we're writing anything the goal is just to write music,” Walling explains. “There's never a need to play live, it’s more just, ‘Let’s write it and if people like it maybe we’ll play a show but whatever let’s just write it.”

Turns out people did like it. A lot. They played their first two shows – both sellouts – opening up for legendary hardcore band The Hope Conspiracy in Philadelphia and New York City last June. When deciding to take the plunge and become a live band, they also decided to expand to a four piece and bring in Kush Simonetti on bass and move Walling to guitar, which is what the lineup will look like on future recordings. “Right up until we played I didn’t know what it was going to be like,” Hirsch says. “It was kinda nice to see that the stuff translated to a live show,” Walling adds with a laugh. When you consider that the band had been around for five years without ever playing a gig, those sentiments definitely make sense.

Asked how he described Staticlone, Hirsch rattled off a ton of influences including Discharge, Gauze, Nausea, Amebix, Celtic Frost, Trouble, Crow, and the NYHC he cut his teeth on as a kid. In fact when he first thought about starting a new band, he says he “started to gravitate towards what my teenage self liked” especially Agnostic Front’s classic Victim In Pain album. This is obviously epic music. There’s also some country and garage rock-style guitar on the album courtesy of Hirsch, who has a solo folk project called Harm Wülf that he’s been doing for more than a dozen years.

Before Better Living Through Static Vision came out the band put out two flexi discs. While that might be considered an obscure format, Hirsch says that, “Flexies are cool and they're quick. You don't have to wait. You don't have to deal with all the stuff that, like, holds up a record. And they fit the theme of bands we were influenced by, like the Japanese stuff and the UK82 stuff.”

The lyrics on the album, all written by Hirsch, focus on themes of alienation and loss. Over the course of the last few years he moved to Chicago and then back home to Philly. This was a time where everything was different and difficult emerging from the pandemic but for Hirsch there was an added element of seeing his old neighborhood go downhill.

As he puts it, “A lot of it is coming back and seeing so much has changed and gentrified and the people that I knew who’ve been displaced from that area. I wouldn’t say that I’m trying to make a political point as much as it’s coming from an emotional standpoint.” Those feelings are addressed head-on in the song “Alone In Philadelphia”:

All that I can hear / Whispers of the past
No one is here / No one’s coming back
A stranger in the place that I was raised
"Everyday is grows more demonic and strange"

At his core Hirsch is a storyteller. Go back and listen to anything he’s ever done and you’ll see it in the unflinching honesty of his lyrics and hear it in his heartfelt vocals. On Better Living Through Static Vision that poetry is paired beautifully with some of the catchiest, heaviest music out there. This is an innovative and interesting band that’s managed to create something new while still maintaining a very palpable link to the various styles that make up its bones.

Which brings us back to those two very important questions: Is it good? Unquestionably. Can you mosh to it? Just try and stand still.

Written by Yoni Kroll