Tomorrow in Anti-Matter: As we approach the end of 2024, not many hardcore bands will be able to claim to have the kind of year that Bryan Garris (@heathen_gang) and Knocked Loose (@knockedloosehc) have had. After a viral performance at Coachella 2023 that saw thousands of people hurling themselves around to one our community’s most extreme hardcore bands (while Billie Eilish vibed to them on side-stage) paved the way, a new album—this year’s “You Won’t Go Until You’re Supposed To”—scaled them to even newer heights: Their biggest headlining show to date, at the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles, drew over 6,500 people in May of this year, for one thing. And just last week, they were nominated for a Grammy Award, for “Suffocate,” in the category of Best Metal Performance. If you’re thinking, “What the fuck?” right now, rest assured: So are they. “I’ve thought about this a lot,” Bryan says. “But I have never, in Knocked Loose’s entire career, set expectations. I love every opportunity that we get, and I never want to walk into anything like I am owed something.” Over the course of our conversation, Bryan and I discuss the way Knocked Loose is trying to adapt to this newfound attention—and how their hardcore upbringing continues to inform the decisions they make, from the way he writes lyrics to the way they put together the lineups on package tours—among many other things. “Listening back to our first EP, I don’t even really know what it was that we wanted to do,” he tells me. “I just know that we liked everything and we went to hardcore shows, so it was this smorgasbord of personal taste mixed with the ethics and approach that we learned from going to DIY hardcore shows. We just tried to take that with us wherever we went.” As always, it lands in your inbox on Thursday morning. Subscribe now at antimatter.substack.com and don’t miss a thing. Thank you, friends. ✨ 📸: Knocked Loose, live at The Midnight Hour Records. San Fernando, CA. April 5, 2024. Photo by Evan Moses (@emphotos98)