Hell is not the afterlife destination for evildoers. It is something we create and inflict upon ourselves and others as a product of our behaviours. It may be more accurate to say there are hellish acts, and it is through a combination of inflicting, receiving , and observing them that a vision of hell on earth begins to crystalize in our thoughts. This existential crisis of trying to live, waiting to die, and watching the carnage in between is in large part why I find Afraid to Die’s Hell Is A Place In My Mind so resonant.
This is a record torn between defeat and hope, with the passing of time noted as the only constant in existence. The band paints a picture of the world teetering on the brink of apocalypse. This is a palpable feeling during a time of climate crisis, pandemic, and the murderous rampages of the fascist regimes of Amerika and “Israel”. One lyric I find especially gripping is “The meek will inherit the earth, but what will be left for them.” If the arc of history does bend towards justice, it still remains a tragedy how many lives have been destroyed by the imperialist capitalist death march we have been forced down by our chud billionaire overlords. The light on the other end of the tunnel is perhaps another train represented by an uninhabitable world found in the aftermath of rising global temperatures and cruel useless displays of military force. The speculation of imagining what this future could look like and what we might have to go through even just to survive until that point is, well, hellish to imagine.
As bleak as this may frame the record to be, there is still a defiant and resilient streak through. The hard and fast physicality of the instrumentation is unrelenting infliction of the will to carry on until one’s time ends. This is only an EP, but it feels monolithic in a way that few hardcore records achieve. This is my favourite record of 2026 so far, and I feel like it’s gonna be tough for any other release to take the crown away by the year’s end.
April 24, 2026