Angel Du$t

Baltimore, 2013, and a side project that outlasted its parent

Angel Du$t formed in Baltimore in 2013 out of the membership of Turnstile and Trapped Under Ice, two bands that between them account for much of what American hardcore sounded like in that decade. Justice Tripp had fronted Trapped Under Ice, a group that pushed the genre's 2010s resurgence by welding Nineties metal to beatdown songwriting; when it broke up in 2013 the side project became the main concern.

The early output set the terms. The Xtra Raw EP and the 2014 debut A.D. — recorded with producer Brian McTernan — were hardcore records with pop-rock instincts sitting openly inside them, which at the time was closer to provocation than consensus. Tripp has been blunt about why the band kept moving: playing the same mosh part because it reliably moves a room gets exhausting, he told Stereogum in July 2023, and finding new ways to challenge people is where the energy actually is.

The Baltimore infrastructure matters to the story. Tripp co-runs Pop Wig Records with Turnstile's Daniel Fang and Brendan Yates, and the label has released Angel Du$t material alongside a wider roster, which has meant the band could make awkward decisions without clearing them with anyone. Tripp also records electronic music as Cold Mega.

Six albums, each one a deliberate swerve

The discography reads as a sequence of refusals to repeat. A.D. arrived in 2014, Rock the Fuck on Forever in 2016, and then Pretty Buff in 2019 pulled the distortion out almost entirely in favour of acoustic power pop — a move that cost them some of the hardcore audience and won them a different one. Billboard described the band in 2019 as among the most important in broadening the scope of hardcore punk, and Kerrang! placed Pretty Buff in its 25 best albums of that year.

YAK: A Collection of Truck Songs followed in 2021, by which point Angel Du$t were signed to Roadrunner, where they stayed until 2025. Brand New Soul came on 9 September 2023 via Pop Wig: thirteen tracks in twenty-nine minutes, produced by Steve Wright and Rob Schnapf, with Mary Jane Dunphe and Citizen's Mat Kerekes guesting and Daniel Fang and Pat McCrory of Turnstile contributing percussion and guitar. Its title track, "Love Slam", "Space Jam" and a cover of Coneheads' "Waste Of Space" sat next to each other without much apology.

Speaking around that record, Tripp framed the whole project as a bet against stagnation: rock and roll, he argued, is not a lifeless genre but one that keeps moving, and the band's job is to move with it. Four of those albums now supply the bulk of a two-hour set, which is an unusual position for a band whose first audience came expecting ninety-second songs.

Cold 2 The Touch: hiring the first producer again

The sixth album, Cold 2 The Touch, was released on 13 February 2026 through Run For Cover Records — a new label for the band after the Roadrunner years. The significant production credit is Brian McTernan, who had recorded A.D. twelve years earlier, and the record reflects the reunion: eleven tracks, around twenty-six minutes, built harder and faster than anything since the first two albums.

The guest list is drawn almost entirely from hardcore's own ranks rather than from outside it: Scott Vogel of Terror, Wes Eisold of American Nightmare and Cold Cave, Patrick Cozens of Restraining Order, Frank Carter, and Taylor Young. Tracks include "DU$T", "Pain Is A Must", "I'm The Outside", "The Beat", "Nothing I Can't Kill", "Man On Fire" and the title song, which Tripp has said is aimed at music and artists that feel lifeless — the record being his attempt at the opposite.

Reviews landed on the same two points: that it is heavier, and that it is annoyed. Pitchfork, writing on 13 February 2026, called it a balance between no-frills punk and acid-blotted experiments on a heavy, weary, pissed-off album. CONE Magazine scored it 80 out of 100 on 19 February 2026 and made the argument that matters commercially for a band of this size — that the record demonstrates why Angel Du$t are essential to see live. Speaking to NME on 17 February 2026, Tripp located the whole thing in a single physical impulse: the desire to jump off the stage, which he said is what rock and roll is.

The line-up carrying it is substantially new. Tripp is now joined by longtime guitarist Steve Marino and bassist Zechariah Ghostribe, with Nick Lewis on drums and Jim Carroll — previously of The Suicide File, The Hope Conspiracy and American Nightmare — on lead guitar.

Standing in October 2026

The album has been worked hard. The North American headline run behind it opened on 26 February 2026 in Baltimore and ran through the spring with a rotating cast of hardcore support acts rather than a fixed opener, which spread the bill across several generations of the genre at once.

Autumn brought a co-headline arrangement with Agnostic Front, a band formed two decades before Angel Du$t existed: eleven East Coast and Southern dates from 27 September 2026 at The Canal Club in Richmond, Virginia to 9 October 2026 at Reverb Outdoor in Reading, Pennsylvania, with Step 2 This supporting most nights and Turnstile joining the 29 September bill at Red Hat Amphitheater in Raleigh. The pairing is consistent with how Tripp talks about the scene's current visibility — he described hardcore's mainstream moment to NME as the physical manifestation of shared childhood dreams, while noting that hardcore has never been a financial venture, particularly in the era Scott Vogel came from.

What remains on sale is short and worth noting for British audiences: Angel Du$t play EartH in London on 13 November 2026 and Whelan's in Dublin on 15 November 2026, followed by Orlando Warehouse in Florida on 9 January 2027. Those are the only dates currently listed, and the London room is the larger of the two European bookings.

The set, and why it runs long now

Setlist data from 2026 shows a band playing far more material than its runtimes suggest. Across 41 logged setlists from the year, the average show runs to roughly nineteen songs, which is possible because so much of the catalogue clocks under two minutes. "DU$T" opened 21 of those 41 shows and "Stepping Stone" closed 34 of them, and not one analysed setlist included an encore — the band simply stop.

The spine of the set draws on four albums without favouring the newest: "Toxic Boombox", "Space Jam", "Take My Love", "Headstone", "The Knife", "The Beat", "I'm The Outside", "Cold 2 The Touch", "Love Slam", "Brand New Soul", "On My Way", "Pain Is A Must", "Set Me Up", "Turn Off the Guitar", "Let It Rot", "Sippin' Lysol" and "Stay". Guests appear when they are in town: at 1720 in Los Angeles on 21 March 2026 the band played 22 songs, with Taylor Young joining for "The Beat" and Alpha & Omega coming out for a cover of Death Threat's "Dead at Birth".