North Carolina hardcore/metalcore act Catharsis have jumped back into the mix after the surprise self-release of a new album, Hope Against Hope, today Friday, August 1st. You can stream it below.

Pre-order physical copies of Hope Against Hope here. A digital booklet was also released which you can access here. 

Originally forming in 1994, group would release full-lengths Samsara and Passion along with a handful of EPs and splits before ultimately disbanding in 2002. Since then the band has been playing sporadic shows and tours since reforming in 2013.

Today, however the Chapel Hill outfit has released their first new material in 26 years in the form of a new album. The latest effort was recorded in late 2024 mostly by the band themselves with help from Benny Grotto. Kurt Ballou had a hand in the post production and Scott Crouse did the final mastering. 

The line up still remains vocalist Brian Dingledine, guitarists Jimmy Chang and Matthew Miller, bassist Ernie Hayes, and drummer Alexi Rodriguez.

The band shared the following:

We have recorded a new album, Hope Against Hope.

This is our first full-length release in 26 years. We’ve been working on these songs for a long time—if you saw us on tour in fall 2000, you witnessed an early version of the oldest one.

We’re still the same band, the four of us who recorded the Passion LP and Jimmy, who left the band almost thirty years ago and had to wait until we got back together in 2012 to resume playing with us. We’re still the same people, just a few years older, a few years angrier, more heartbroken, more haunted by the brutality of our society, more convinced of the urgency of our mission. We are still doing what we have always done, metabolizing our grief into fury, our despair into determination, reaching out to you across the gulfs that divide us, seeking to give hope to fellow rebel hearts.

It is still true that, if the world we deserve to live in does not exist, then our clumsy efforts to bring it into being are the closest thing to it that we will ever experience, and the best way to mourn our distance from it, the best way to honor it and what is noblest within us. Hope Against Hope is our humble contribution.

We tracked the drums with Benny Grotto at Mad Oak Studios and recorded the rest ourselves. Kurt Ballou at God City mixed it, Scott Crouse mastered it, and we are releasing it through our friends’ do-it-yourself hardcore labels. Some of our favorite musicians perform with us on this recording, including Gosia from the Polish band Next Victim and the singers of Brazil’s Point of No Return and North Carolina’s own Scarecrow and Vittna.

You can stream the record now everywhere, or order from CrimethInc. in North America, or No Gods No Masters in South America, or Refuse Records in Europe. Download from crimethinc.bandcamp.com. The booklet, with lyrics, is at catharsis.band. All of these links are at linktr.ee/catharsis_nc

For us, hardcore is not a style of dance music or a marketing strategy. Hardcore is still a secret society at war with the world, a way of living in struggle against everything around us that is petty and servile, a way of fighting to defend the beauty of the world.

For all, against all.

 

 

Pre-order physical copies of Hope Against Hope here.

Hope Against Hope track list:

1. Nocturne
2. Power
3. Gone to Croatan
4. Eremocene
5. Embers
6. We Live
7. Last Words

 

Additionally Catharsis announced a European tour scheduled for October also featuring Point Of No Return, Ghostchant, and Vlkn. Dates are below.

10/16 Warsaw, PL @ Voodoo Club  
10/17 Krakow, PL @ Sny  
10/18 Budapest, HU @ Turbina  
10/19 Zagreb, HR @ AKC Attack  
10/20 Bologna, IT @ Freakout  
10/21 Munich, DE @ Kafe Kult  
10/22 Vienna, AT @ Tüwi  
10/23 Brno, CZ @ Kabinet MUZ  
10/24 Schweinfurt, DE @ Stattbahnhof  
10/25 Berlin, DE @ Neue Zukunft  
 

 

 

Search for tours coming to your city here.