I love hardcore so! Much!
Name one other music genre where it’s not only accepted, but encouraged to jump on stage, scream into the singer’s mic, and then jump into a vortex of human beings, all going out of their way to flail limbs around?
Try that shit at a Harry Styles show and count the amount of times you will be tasered.
Not so at Pitfest, though. At the punk stage, you can stage dive all day, every day of the fest.
And now, Pitfest is over. Or well, ever, in its current incarnation. One more edition is set to shake the earth, in a manner, next year, but it will be under roof and a bit more modest, from what I understand.
The festivities last weekend met a tragic end, unfortunately, with a visitor passing away towards the end of the last day. A shock to everyone involved, to say the least, of course for the loved ones of the deceased, but also for the organisers of the festival, who certainly were not looking to close things out like this.
Having said all this, Pitfest 2026 had a banger of a line-up and I’ve witnessed some of the best hardcore sets ever. More on that later. But first…
I AM… THE LOOSE TOPICS… FALL TO ME!
New Converge! Hum of Hurt is out now, an accompaniment of the earlier this year released Love Is Not Enough.
Fuming Mouth released the first single of their new album, The Ringing Bell. The song, A Blaze of Nihilism, definitely falls more on the death metal side of their famous death metal/hardcore stylings.
You know what’s cool about old computers? A LOT! But one of the things is the software that makes them go. Dive into that sweet nostalgia of operating systems of the past with the Virtual OS Museum. It has everything you need to download and run some OSes from days of yore.
Here’s a trailer for The Social Reckoning, the sequel to the 2010 banger The Social Network. Guess what? Mark Zuckerberg’s a giant piece of shit! And this time it’s Jeremy Strong who’s gonna make him look as unlikeable as possible.
On the movie tip: I got a 4K UHD Blu-Ray of Blood Sport because I played a bunch of old Mortal Kombat games last week and oh, also: this movie rules. It’s dumb as rocks in exactly the right way.
So, Pitfest 2026. A stacked line-up, as per this poster:
A few favourites then, accompanied by some imagery I was able to snatch from the jaws of reality. Check out the gallery on the site for high-res version.
Kicking off with the famous trumpet intro from Start Today, as performed by two local trumpeters, Gorilla Biscuits completely wrecked shop. High fives and stage dives all over the place.
The same could be said for Judge, with people packed so tightly against the stage you could Dead Sea those motherfuckers.
One of two big surprises this Pitfest was Merauder – not because of the music because that’s of course evident, but because of the good vibes and energy the band brought, despite the singer having a bad throat day. It was all good.
The other big surprise for me was The Good, The Bad and the Zugly, Norway’s meanest punk rock ’n’ roll group to date. Jumping all over the place, including into the audience, always makes for a good impression on me.
Crust punk corner: Martyrdöd and Generation Decline brought the squat vibes and honestly kicked some grimy, melodic ass.
Cro-Mags was certainly not the last band I enjoyed, but I’ll leave it there for now. Can’t believe that band is still good after all this time. Genuinely.
As astute readers may have noticed, I don’t have anything particularly enlightening to say about Pitfest 2026. In fact, I’m trying to resist having a big brain take about loss and losing a place like Pitfest after so many years of it just being there for folks like me who grew up on small shows in the country side.
Let me just enjoy this while it lingers.
It was a hell of a run, and the people who put this together for this long, should be beyond proud.