When Denver five-piece Destiny Bond perform live, they shed pints of sweat like any hardworking hardcore band. But every once in a while, they lose more than just fluids; vocalist Cloe Madonna Janzen busted a tooth at a recent gig in San Antonio, Texas, marking the second time she’s lost one at a show. Aside from being punk as fuck, Janzen’s dental mishap encapsulates Destiny Bond’s spirit of inversion: Pain can be liberating, anger can be productive, and hardcore can be vulnerable. On their new album The Love, Destiny Bond mine these dualities and hone their sound into something that’s somehow crisper and more ragged all at once.
On their 2023 debut, Be My Vengeance, Destiny Bond leaned into the more melodic tendencies of the punk and emo they grew up on (AFI, Kid Dynamite, Sunny Day Real Estate), and Janzen slipped between phlegmy screams and cleaner yelps. On The Love, she commits entirely to grizzled shrieking, and her bandmates—guitarists Emily Armitage and Amos Helvey, drummer Adam Croft, and bassist Rio Wolf—dish out even heftier riffs, especially on the album’s quasi title track, “Can’t Kill the Love,” with its crackling guitar solo and burly backing vocals. The subsequent “Debt Perception” borrows from even gnarlier genres like power metal, between Croft’s walloping kick drum and Wolf’s crunching bass riffs.
As Destiny Bond’s lyricist, Janzen animates many songs with rallying cries for trans people such as herself (and Wolf), but she always strives to write for anyone struggling within their tight-knit scene. “Debt Perception” could be read as a screed against anti-trans legislation, or a manifesto against oppression in general. “You still won’t let us live,” Janzen screams, sawtoothed guitar surging just below her voice. “Now we swing as hard as the rest of them/You can’t keep us in.” It’s no coincidence that such a unifying song has one of Destiny Bond’s most shoutable choruses: “We bash back/Break glass/Keep score!”
