Ground Control Touring

When CANDY were beginning to sketch the contours of their third full-length, they sat down and wrote a list that would serve as their guiding mood. Among the words and phrases: Big, Fun, Holy Shit, Ridiculous, and Blockbuster. That should give you a good idea of what It’s Inside You, out on Relapse Records this June 7th, is all about. Their mission was to build upon the world of CANDY—in doing so, they focused first and foremost on creating an energizing and empowering atmosphere, in which seeking connections with oneself and with others was central. CANDY is made up of principle songwriter and guitarist Michael Quick, vocalist and lyricist Zak Quiram, drummer Steve DiGenio and bassist Drew Stark.  In their world-building efforts, the quartet opened it up and invited collaborators—like Integrity’s Aaron Melnick, Angel Du$t’s Justice Tripp, and Trash Talk’s David Gagliardi—who helped enrich and further define the band’s already distinctive personality.

“It is their love songs that feel the most extreme,” wrote Madison Bloom of Pitchfork, reviewing 2022’s Heaven Is Here, about CANDY’s tendency to infuse hardcore with tenderness—not necessarily in melodics, but in their music’s fissures, its in-betweenness, its raw emotion. Here on It’s Inside You this insight has come to its furthest fruition yet. Co-produced by Quick and Uniform’s Ben Greenberg (who’s also worked on records with Pharmakon, Ceremony, and Lamb of God), It’s Inside You is a kind of manifesto of kinship and inner strength. “In the past, we’ve leaned into the nihilistic and sad sides of that, a more negative side of the heaviness,” Quiram reflects. On this new record, CANDY leans into the space where heaviness becomes motivational. It’s pure energy—for action, transformation, aspiration. It might be a surprising turn of temperament from the boys who brought you “World of Shit,” but it’s part of the point: to turn self-isolation into expansion and adrenaline. “We really wanted a feeling,” says Quick—a good one.

These 12 tracks, which clock in total at just over 30 minutes, still include some classic CANDY political pessimism, especially on the three that lie smack dab in the middle of the record—the ”mechanical warfare” of “Dehumanize Me,” the “godless age” of “Terror Management,” and the “shattered days,” of the death metal-inspired, Psychic TV-referencing “Dreams Less Sweet.” But ultimately, the vibe is that, despite the doom, The faith is strong within myself. And as opening track “eXistenZ” encourages, Remember what you dreamt to be.

Spurred by an interest in connectivity and the spirit of community, this is the first CANDY record with more than one feature—It’s Inside You has five, all within the first five tracks. It was because the band felt more confident than ever in their sound that they invited collaboration. For each of the features, they had something in mind for their friends during the time of writing, and were assured each musician—all people they “trust to the fullest”—would take it in their directions, and “go wild with it.” And they did.

Commencing with Aaron Melnick, of Integrity, on electric second track “Short-Circuit,” the first half of this album is simultaneously a proclamation of self and an ode to influences. “If somebody put a gun to my head and made me pick the best hardcore band ever, I would probably say Integrity,” Quick proclaims. Right on its heels is “You Will Never Get Me,” a visceral song about guarded hearts and crushing pressures and searching for peace—and to which Justice Tripp, of hardcore phenoms Angel Du$t and Trapped Under Ice, contributed searing vocals.

The north star for this record is the title track, the song that features a David Gagliardi guitar solo. It’s where the theme derived from, as Quiram puts it, “Trying to find motivation within yourself rather than relying on other people and looking outside of your world—looking at what’s around you and making things happen on your own.” The Trash Talk guitarist apparently soloed for “literally three hours,” the results “equally insane.” The song itself is, of course, a blistering three minutes during which Quiram wails poetic about Dreamland, pure elation / Visiting worlds that never were and insists you Start the riot, because—It’s inside you. “It’s Inside You” is their most successful melding to date, as well, a hybrid of breakbeats and drum n bass, echoing ‘90s digital hardcore like Atari Teenage Riot, but with some Rammstein and Cro-Mags thrown into the mix, for an affect that mirrors their communal ethos and serves as a philosophical underpinning for the record as a whole.

Where It’s Inside You feels the most like a progression is on and “Love Like Snow,” which features vocals from MIRSY, aka Marisa Shirar, of Fleshwater, and mixing and production from mmph (Sae Heum Han), who “really understood how to make it hit the hardest way.” Not only is it a totally new avenue of sonic landscape for CANDY, with its layers of electronic elements—which “made the heaviness even heavier,” as Quick says—it’s also perhaps the band’s most optimistic, lyrically, with Quiram crystal clear, chanting, Push the soul back in / Connection never felt so real / Can it last forever? The electronics here foreshadow the record’s end, the rave-y tone of “Dancing to the Infinite Beat” and “Hypercore,” both exhilarating, fresh turns for the band. This experimentation signifies a pivotal moment for CANDY. As Quiram states: “This is the first version of truly who we are.”

Founded in 2017 between Richmond and Buffalo, CANDY’s 2018 debut full-length Good To Feel solidified the band’s existence at the precipice of extreme hardcore. Good To Feel includes the gut punching tracks “Good To Feel” and “Lust For Destruction” and introduced the world to the metal-twisting, digitally-clamored ethos of CANDY. In 2022, CANDY released the aforementioned sophomore album Heaven Is Here, which conjured negativity, anxiety, and chaos through the funnel of beastial noise and techno-glitches. Where Heaven Is Here acted as the project to “push people away,” as described by Quick, It’s Inside You arrives to “pull people back in” with an invitation to enter the collaborative, viscerally charged and roughly tender world of CANDY.