One of the most exciting developments in recent RVA hardcore/metal history has been the joining together of Tony Foresta and Phil “Landphil” Hall from Municipal Waste with Paul Burnette and Ryan Parrish, formerly of Darkest Hour, to form the supergroup Iron Reagan. Bursting onto the scene last year with a four-song demo that went by in just under five minutes, these guys knocked everyone’s socks off with a no-frills sound that boils down everything that all of the members have done before into a concise grind/thrash style that focuses on speed and anger.
One of the most exciting developments in recent RVA hardcore/metal history has been the joining together of Tony Foresta and Phil “Landphil” Hall from Municipal Waste with Paul Burnette and Ryan Parrish, formerly of Darkest Hour, to form the supergroup Iron Reagan. Bursting onto the scene last year with a four-song demo that went by in just under five minutes, these guys knocked everyone’s socks off with a no-frills sound that boils down everything that all of the members have done before into a concise grind/thrash style that focuses on speed and anger.
Considering how busy the members are–besides Municipal Waste, Phil also plays in Cannabis Corpse, and Ryan is in a ton of other bands, including the long-running experimental hardcore duo, Suppression–it’s no surprise that it’s taken them over a year to get a new record finished. But the wait is almost over. Baltimore’s A389 Records will be releasing the debut Iron Reagan LP, Worse Than Dead, on March 6. When we interviewed them last summer, they mentioned that they’d been working on recording fully two dozen songs, and 19 of those tracks will appear on Worse Than Dead (and it will still probably be less than 30 minutes long). You can hear the first of those 19 tracks right now! Brooklyn Vegan premiered the Iron Reagan song “Cycle Of Violence” on their website yesterday, and we’ve got a stream of the track right here for you to check out:
Iron Reagan played in Baltimore last week as part of the A389 Records yearly celebration for owner Dom Romeo’s birthday, along with such legendary hardcore bands as Left For Dead, Catharsis, Gehenna, and Despise You (plus many, many more), and they’ve got a few other dates in New York, Philly, and Maryland scheduled for mid-February. Hopefully, you won’t have to drive several hours to see these hometown boys in action, though, because we can only imagine that there will be a record release show happening right here in RVA sometime in the next couple of months. (Right, guys?) As soon as we get the definitive word on such a thing, we’ll certainly pass it along to you. In the meantime, enjoy the new track, and if that’s not enough Iron Reagan for you, go grab their demo off bandcamp (if you haven’t already), and check out this awesome live video from their appearance at the A389 Fest this past weekend:
