Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp: “Hardcore has never been a financial venture”

The influential hardcore frontperson, previously of Trapped Under Ice, opens up about anxiety, authenticity and the genre’s new era The post Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp: “Hardcore has never been a financial venture” appeared first on NME. FeaturesMusic Interviews Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp: “Hardcore has never been a financial venture” The influential hardcore frontperson, previously of Trapped Under Ice, opens up about anxiety, authenticity and the genre’s new era By Georgia Evans 17th February 2026 Angel Du$t credit: Kat Nijmeddin By the time Justice Tripp logs onto Zoom at 1pm, he’s already been awake longer than usual. “I woke up and hung out with the dogs, made breakfast,” he says. “Usually I’m a pretty late-to-rise type person, so I woke up about two hours ago.” The dogs in question – English bull terriers – have become something of an unofficial mascot for his band, Baltimore hardcore group Angel Du$t, popping up on the band’s merch whether he’s asked for them or not. “I don’t think I’ve ever once asked for the bull terrier,” he laughs. “People are just like, ‘Oh yeah, you have a bull terrier, I’m gonna put that on this design.’” It is a level of domestic calm you might not expect from a frontperson who has always thrived on urgency. For the past 15 years, Tripp has helped shape modern American hardcore. As the frontperson of Trapped Under Ice, he drove the genre’s 2010s resurgence, fusing ’90s metal heft with confrontational beatdown songwriting. With Angel Du$t, he pulls the other way, stretching hardcore’s limits through melody and loosened form. Advertisement That restlessness runs through everything he does. Songs feel less written than expelled, sprinting tempos snapping into sudden melody, driven by the nervous energy he has been trying to release since his teens. Angel Du$t now occupies the space between softness and intensity, a friction that defines ‘Cold 2 The Touch’, their most ambitious and fully realised record to date. Its arrival last week coincides with a moment when hardcore itself feels closer to the cultural centre than ever before. “This album feels like a big moment in the fact that our team is just locked in,” Tripp says. “We set aside a lot of time to plan for this record, and just trying to do everything right, make the coolest album possible and put it in front of as many people as possible.” He pauses, then qualifies it. “You do that every time you put out a record, but you’re always learning and growing. This just feels… different.” That difference isn’t just internal. Hardcore has spent the last few years edging into places it hasn’t occupied in decades, bigger rooms, wider audiences, and, most visibly, commercial recognition. When Turnstile picked up two Grammys earlier this year, a line had firmly been crossed. Hardcore is now ‘mainstream’. For Tripp, who shares deep creative and personal ties with the band (Turnstile drummer Daniel Fang and guitarist Pat McCrory were both early members of Angel Du$t), the moment was emotional rather than vindicating. “It’s the visual, physical manifestation of a lot of mine and probably our shared childhood dreams,” he says. “Not necessarily a Grammy, but just to see the world hear what we’ve been trying to say.” Recommended Angel Du$t were early to the melodic crossover conversation that now dominates hardcore’s most visible edge, but Tripp is wary of claiming ownership. “There’s melody in the first hardcore band,” he points out. “A lot of people would point to Bad Brains. That’s what it was.” For him, Angel Du$t’s trajectory isn’t about softening the genre, but reconnecting with its foundations. “As much as I love how hardcore’s evolved into something almost metal in a lot of cases, sometimes more metal than metal […] for us, it was like a return to form. Like, what did the [bands like] Bad Brains bring to this? What did a lot of early hardcore carry that you don’t see as much anymore? Melodic value.” “[Hardcore’s mainstream success is] the visual, physical manifestation of a lot of mine and probably our shared childhood dreams” Still, increased visibility brings friction within the purist parts of the scene. Hardcore has always been fiercely protective of itself, and Tripp understands why. “That instinct exists in me,” he admits. “It probably exists in everybody who grew up on hardcore. We all want to protect this thing that’s been so important to us.” For him, the stakes are personal. “Hardcore music specifically kept me on a really productive path. There’s a lot of dark directions I could’ve gone in life, but this kept me grounded.” The problem, he says, isn’t new listeners or bigger stages, it’s the potential exploitation of a scared space, and “greed and inauthenticity”. “When dollar signs start popping up, that’s when it gets dangerous,” he reasons. That’s when, in his words, hardcore needs its “top-tier gatekeepers”. “Not to keep people out,” he clarifies, “but to protect this little microcosm of rock’n’roll from being exploited.” Advertisement Rock’n’roll is a phrase Tripp returns to often, and deliberately. It’s how he defines what Angel Du$t and many modern hardcore bands actually are. “I’ve always looked for that thing in music. We called it roc