Death Or Glory Fest has one of the most interesting histories out of any festival in it’s first year- having history is not necessarily the best thing to start off with. Being moved from San Diego to 1720 Warehouse and losing half of the lineup was quite the drastic change-up. Regardless all of the artists who performed gave it their all, and it’s important to the scene that Death Or Glory stayed committed to hosting Detroit’s legendary Cold As Life for their first SoCal performance ever while maintaining a solid enough lineup to justify carrying on.
The lineup featured a hodgepodge of fanbases with LA legends Strife, Orange County’s much more melodic Ignite, Los Angeles’ Section H8 performing their first show in over a year, and the brutal OC powerviolence of Scalp.
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While many bands who played fit in with the tough-as-nails final bill for the fest, there were definitely outliers who probably would have had better crowds at the original San Diego iteration. The original SD lineup had more classic punk and Oi artists with a much brighter sound like TSOL and Rixe, so some variety was definitely lost when the fest rescheduled. Regardless, even bands that might not have had a built in or even a FFO fanbase at this show, everyone still gave it their all and every performance was spectacular; I personally didn’t mind the harder, darker, and more dangerous nature of the final lineup and thought it was a welcomed addition to Los Angeles’ ever-growing massive selection of options for hardcore festivals.
I arrived a bit late for the festival around 5:30 PM, mainly due to how daunting and intense it seemed to spend the entire day at 1720 Warehouse. While I do love this venue and its gritty nature has a punk charm to it, it’s definitely an extremely sketchy area to park your car and drinks there are too expensive to stay inside the venue all day. It seemed that many other seasoned hardcore fans felt the same way, with many older folks not arriving until the evening and the daytime crowd consisting mostly of wild young punks for LA cult favorites like Desmadre and Barrio Slam.
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Even if 1720 wasn’t the most optimal place for my elderly millennial ass to spend the day, it’s inspiring that the youth showed up to rep their favorite bands in one of the most traditionally punk ways possible. Especially with the recent closure of Chain Reaction and Midnight Hour Records set to close their doors in 2027, it’s more important than ever that the young hardcore fans have an independent spot to mosh and stagedive that doesn’t have the restrictive safety-nets of corporate venues- to that end, 1720 is the perfect venue.
Scalp are easily one of the scariest and most intimidating heavy bands to emerge in recent memory. Not in the “tough guy hardcore” crowd-killing manner that has been done to death by trendy zoomer bands nowadays, but through pure unfiltered aggression and focused chaos that’s genuinely punk rock at its core. Their most recent 2026 release “NOT WORTHY OF HUMAN COMPASSION” was their best yet, being a clear winner for heaviest album of the year with its noise-filled production and shifts between rapid fast-as-hell powerviolence into slow breakdowns that encourage fists to be thrown in all directions.
Scalp shows live up to the dark, tortured anger that the album portrays, feeling as if this spirit is almost personified in the room with how violent their pits are. Even if there’s moments where there’s only 3 people in the pit because the rest of the room is terrified of them, frontman Cole Rodgers will focus taunting everybody into moving up and joining them in the destruction. The entire rhythm section is so in-sync with the chaotic unpredictability of Devan Fuentes’ thrashing guitar riffs that they are easily one of the loudest bands in the hardcore scene right now as well. Scalp is going to be one of those bands that has urban legends surrounding them for decades with how much madness they bring to their shows, and anybody who is a fan of any type of heavy music would be doing themselves a disservice by not experiencing it for themselves.
Section H8 are one of the most distinctly Los Angeles bands in all of hardcore currently, appearing on an insane variety of diverse lineups from opening for old school punk and Oi bands to being a staple on some of the heavier and more aggressive lineups we see in Southern California. It’s easy to see why they have this reach, having a wide array of influences from their groovy and thrashy guitar riffs that resemble old school Suicidal, to the pummeling simplicity of their breakdowns that inspire the sort of aggression that you’d find on Hatebreed’s early releases. Section H8 are equally classic punk rock as they are modern beatdown hardcore, and this blend could not have been better suited for this festival.
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This was Section H8’s first hometown Los Angeles show in a bit over a year, and they delivered one of the best performances I’ve seen from them. They sounded heavier, faster, more brutal than on their 2020 album; and frontman Mexi was all across the stage thrashing towards the crowd, equally intimidating them as he was inviting them to move up and contribute to the chaos. Something about the LA hardcore scene felt deeply missing, even in their short absence. Section H8 are already slated to play on multiple incredible lineups coming up this year, and hopefully that means we see some new music from them as well. Considering how much meaner and more vicious this last performance sounded than most of the times I’ve seen them, it’s bound to shake up the scene even more than their debut album did.
Ignite and their signature brand of melodic hardcore that sounds like Orange County incarnate have never really been my favorite brand of the genre, but playing alongside the darker and heavier bands at Death Or Glory was one of the boldest things I’ve ever seen from an artist; it seriously took serious balls with how different their entire aesthetic is. Originally formed in 1993, Ignite were definitely one of the veteran performances of the night. Although the younger people in attendance may have been confused by their sound, the flamboyant and energetic showmanship that they performed with surely won a few new fans over.
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Guitarist Nik Hill was one of the most electric and expressive guitarists I have ever seen before, posing for dramatic slides to the photographers and being equally engaged with the crowd as frontman Eli Santana is. It seemed that Ignite were very aware that this might not be the sort of audience that will be throwing spin-kicks in the pit for them, but they wanted to personify their uplifting and inspirational music as much as possible to the room anyways. The scene needs more positive bands like Ignite in order to thrive- especially if the melodic side of the scene is what brought many of us here in the first place. Even if a significant amount of hardcore fans have grown out of the more pop-punk nature of bands like Ignite, it’d be foolish to ignore your roots and many oldh eads definitely have Ignite planted deeply in theirs’.
Strife were a perfect co-headliner for Death And Glory to choose, building the perfect bridge from Ignite’s brighter OC melodic hardcore to Cold As Life’s punishing and cold-blooded brutal brand of the East Coast scene. It’s actually pretty insane that all of these bands were formed around the same time in the same genre considering how different they all sound, so it was genius of Death Or Glory to schedule all 3 of them as the ending block in order to showcase how diverse hardcore music has always been throughout its history. But this is a Los Angeles festival and as far as LA is concerned, there couldn’t be a better band to represent hardcore’s history here than Strife. While they may not receive the same attention from classic punk boomers as bands like Black Flag and Fear, they are on that same level for LA’s current hardcore scene with how influential they’ve been in bringing the tougher elements of East Coast hardcore to SoCal.
Frontman Rick Rodney has to have one of the most recognizable looks in hardcore or punk music as a whole, resembling a criminal version of the Lorax with his bushy orange mustache that still manages to look tough as hell. Anybody who has seen Strife is bound to remember them forever, as he often fearlessly just walks into the middle of the pit to sing like he did here at Death Or Glory. Strife has been a major player in the LA scene for so long, that it’s clear they aren’t intimidated by any sort of chaos or violence that the younger crowds could possibly concoct. While Strife is a lot heavier than Ignite, they do still have a bright and groovy sound especially thanks to their bassist Chad J Peterson providing moments that demand everybody in the room 2-step. Ignite was for the circle pits, Strife was for 2-stepping and picking up change, and Cold As Life was about to bring the real gnarly spinkicks and windmills to the evening.
Cold As Life is a band whose mythos almost surpasses the amount of people who have actually listened to their music. Known as one of the most absurdly violent bands in hardcore’s history with legends of massive fights and stabbings at their shows, and vocalist/guitarist Jeff Gunnells being arrested for armed robbery in 2013; Cold As Life is a hard as hell band, definitely bringing a darker East Coast spirit to the scene than what we’re used to in Los Angeles. The band apparently thought the same throughout their career, as this was the first SoCal show they have ever performed despite being formed all the way back in 1988.
As soon as Cold As Life took the stage, I recognized vocalist Jeff Gunnells from his mugshot photo, but I was absolutely shocked to see him pick up a guitar as I had no idea he played both roles in the band before this show started. The sort of animated spirit he brings to the stage as a frontman while playing guitar simultaneously is a level of energy that we rarely see from hardcore or any punk bands nowadays. This element alone made their performance feel like you were witnessing something incredibly rare from a world that no longer exists nowadays. The fans that were dedicated to hitting a stage dive that evening didn’t let this stop them from doing so, and Gunnells somehow managed to stay just as focused on hyping up the crowd as he was in playing their incredibly dark and heavy riffs.
Cold As Life were definitely the main draw of the evening for many, but the more curated and niche lineup didn’t exactly bring a crowd that moshed as much as they should have for this rare opportunity. One of the unfortunate elements of hardcore entering the mainstream and developing an online “fandom” is that there are so many tough guys that claim they’ll beat some ass in the pit if they ever had the opportunity to see a certain artist, but they totally fail to deliver once they are actually presented with it. Whatever the cause, there was a constant encouragement and shaming from the stage for fans to engage more, dance more and a constant demand to “move up!” A lot of negative space in the pit puts some bands in a negative head space- which is probably not a terrible approach to hardcore music.
Even so, Cold As Life are one of the most interesting bands in all of hardcore history and their sound is so distressingly brutal that I personally wanted all of my focus to be on their performance rather than the distractions of moshing around me. Many others in the room probably felt the same as this was such a rare once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. We all wanted to celebrate Cold As Life’s first SoCal show and the lifelong hardcore fans in the room will never forget that night; it was a reminder that moshing or other focuses of the current scene will never be more important than simply seeing an incredible legendary band perform their classics live. Even though the hardcore scene has so many other elements baked into it, the music still comes first in the end and few do it heavier than Cold As Life.
Death Or Glory festival’s original incarnation may have been a more cohesive lineup that was accessible to all sorts of punk fans, but the reset version we received at 1720 Warehouse really honed in on crafting a niche lineup for the diehards in the scene that was equally diverse.
In a way, the more specialized final version created a more intimate setting that felt like an escape from the modern commercialization that is currently taking place in hardcore; somehow without being gatekeep-y either, as many bands on the lineup like Desmadre and Scalp were a must to draw in much younger fans.
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Death Or Glory really has the opportunity to create a new sort of hardcore festival experience that showcases rare performances for the oldheads, while simultaneously keeping the lineup fresh enough so younger audiences attend and receive a bit of wisdom about the genre’s history and where their roots come from. Everyone who was there cared about the music first and experiencing a piece of hardcore history; not getting in line for merch, filming themselves stagediving, crowd-killing for TikTok views, or any of the trendy main-character syndrome energy that has unfortunately invaded the scene in recent years.
Death Or Glory truly felt like going to a hardcore festival like it used to be before the 2020 blowup of the genre, and that is a truly magical and uncommon thing to experience in modern day. If they find a way to keep this spirit while expanding into even more diverse lineups with uncommon performances, Death Or Glory could become the next travel-destination hardcore festival for anyone in the scene who cares more about witnessing a legendary performance than filming their choreographed dance moves in the pit. That may be a rare audience to find nowadays, but this year’s Death Or Glory proved that it’s possible.
Words: Danny Ryan
Photos: Albert Licano
