“We didn’t sacrifice anything that makes us Porcupine. We’re still heavy. This is our most collaborative project to date as a band. We don’t take ourselves too seriously, but we take the band and the music itself very seriously. People should be keeping their eyes peeled for anything that we do.”

Porcupine vocalist and lyricist Dawson Kiser sounds extremely proud and confident when he says this to me, his excitement about his band’s newest material completely shining through the Google Meet call we arranged. I have been closely watching the evolution of the Chicagoland and Pittsburgh hardcore outfit since their first proper releases in 2018, though they had been germinating deep in the Midwest suburbs for a couple of years already at that point. Since then, I’ve heard the band put out record after record of intense, chaotic, blistering hardcore music, and seen them perform with the likes of Harvest, Ignite, and Portrayal Of Guilt. 2024 was a crucial year for the band, with their debut full-length album All Is Vapor being unleashed in June — sharing a release date with Charli xcx’s unavoidable brat, a fact they jokingly feel set them back. “Our album is a challenging listen; it’s long and ruthless for a modern hardcore album,” guitarist Joey Hernandez reflects. “And it came out the same day as brat, so we got beef with Charli now.”

Porcupine’s music has nothing in common with the 365 party girl herself, as you might imagine. Their ferocious and unrelenting approach to hardcore and metal is one of the most impressive that the underground has to offer, evident by songs like “Funeral Grief” from 2021’s The Sybil EP, or “Army Of Martyrs” from All Is Vapor. Now, just over a year later, the band is back with the six-track EP Under The Altar, released via Chicago label New Morality Zine, the band’s longtime home. The 25-minute collection serves as a direct companion to last year’s album, with its only physical release being a CD that compiles the two – a further extension of the themes and imagery that began with The Sybil. Dawson Kiser breaks it all down: “There is a strong connection between those three records. I was still exploring different ideas, starting with The Sybil, but there’s been this consistent philosophical idea of dualism – the idea of having a body and a spirit, being drawn to material life and immaterial life – and what that means in a world full of suffering and depravity. That’s been across the board through our releases, but I think it’s gotten more precise on Under The Altar.”

Hernandez adds, “Some of the ideas for these new songs have been around for a while. Dawson wanted to do a sequel to ‘Holy Cowards’ from All Is Vapor, which sort of inspired us to do this follow-up EP. I pulled a lot of things that have been sitting on the shelf and recreated them to sound like something that Porcupine would make in 2025. I was really influenced by mewithoutYou, who put out a lot of sequels to other things across their discography. The next one we worked on redoing was ‘Close The Doors,’ since the album version is just acoustic. We wanted to work out a full band version for our live set, and Dawson added new lyrics to it. I think the sequel totally works as a tone setter for the EP before ‘Dull Blade’ comes in.”

Under The Altar’s title track is the band’s longest to date, clocking in at just under nine minutes. The group is no stranger to epic, sprawling songs on their releases, like “The Kingdom Of Heaven” from The Sibyl and “I Am Bound” from All Is Vapor. But this track’s inception also predates the other songs on the EP by quite some time, as the band explains. “It was originally called ‘I Wish You Peace,’ and it came out on the benefit compilation Artists For Black Lives Matter Vol. 1 back in 2020,” Kiser recalls about his original acoustic performance of the track. Hernandez follows, “I always had the idea to make that a Porcupine song because I thought the melody and riff were so sick. When I translated it to the band, I wanted it to be super calm in the beginning, because what Dawson is saying lyrically on the song is just so haunting and desperate, but I knew the second half would be a lot more intense.”

Kiser admits, “It’s a very exhausting song for me. My vocal approach was totally different; I’ve never sung that way on a Porcupine song before. I start really subdued, and then it goes into this painful scream where I’m trying to hold the note of the song. I was listening to a lot of Battle Of Mice and their vocalist, Julie Christmas, while writing the song. Her vocals really inspire me because they’re so terrifying and emotional all at once.”

Hernandez and Kiser are the band’s co-founders and only consistent members, although Under The Altar was mixed by returning bassist Jordan Hermes, an element of the record they’re both excited about. “We love him being back, he’s been instrumental in making these songs sound like more than just demos. It feels so natural, and we’re so locked in whenever we practice. He’s been a huge part of us becoming a better band,” Hernandez says.

Between the thematic consistency of their 2020s catalog and the return of early band members, the conversation with the band led me to suggest the idea of the “Porcupine Cinematic Universe,” and it turns out I wasn’t far off. “Jordan said the same thing,” Hernandez says. “We all like to do different stuff that may not be directly related to Porcupine, but it’s all kind of connected. Dawson’s solo record that came out recently is like that.”

Released in May under his middle name, Micaiah Kaiser, Treachery Utterly Murders Our Respect, or TUMOR, is a deeply personal record about betrayal, heartbreak, and suffering. “It was still a collaboration with Joey,” Kiser notes. “We’ve been working on it for a long time, like five years…”

“That’s because I was procrastinating,” Hernandez admits.

“… that’s also true, but I wasn’t going to throw you under the bus,” Kiser laughs. He continues, “There are some sonic similarities to the band because it’s these same two guys working on it, but nothing sounds like a Porcupine song. It’s not remotely hardcore. I don’t really know what to call it. Joey is better at identifying genres than I am.”

Hernandez qualifies, “It’s like Giles Corey-core. Definitely something for fans of that or other artists on The Flenser record label. Bedroom recordings with some spacey and ambient beats.”

“Nick Cave is probably my most listened-to artist of all time,” Kiser says when asked about other musical artists that inform his writing. “I’m always listening to his stuff and am really influenced by the way he approaches dark themes with a sort of folklore style.”

The full band’s approach to what they call “dark hardcore” feels informed more at times by leftfield and experimental artists like Cave or King Woman than traditional hardcore bands, but Hernandez and Kiser haven’t lost any love for their anchoring genre, despite the sense that they’re navigating their way through it. “The thing about hardcore,” Hernandez confesses, “it’s kind of a sore subject for us. We’re totally doing our own thing, and it’s not the cool thing to do. I think that’s made us stand out, but it’s also made us go, ‘Oh, people don’t really understand what this is.’ We’re always thinking about that type of thing. I love bands like Candy and Vein because they’re so off-kilter and doing something interesting, but you can tell they’re all really talented dudes. Or a band like Code Orange, where you can tell they have hardcore roots, but they went in more of a rock and roll direction that was still really heavy.”

Kiser adds, “I still view us as a hardcore band, I don’t ever see us as not having an obvious hardcore influence. There are songs on Under The Altar that are just hardcore songs to me, and how I personally understand the genre. I still love listening to hardcore bands and going to shows and watching people going crazy, even if some of the more popular bands don’t generally line up with what Porcupine is doing. Even some of my favorite bands like All Else Failed, Converge, and Starkweather, that maybe lean more metal or something else entirely, they’re still hardcore bands to me.”

Porcupine’s live performances are not to be missed — the quintet consistently delivers blistering and visceral shows at any venue they play, channeling the energy of some of extreme music’s tightest acts like Full Of Hell and Harm’s Way. They’ve just wrapped up a short touring run with close friends The Jackal – a new Ohio band featuring members of Griphook and Coop. On the tour, Hernandez says, “I’m excited to connect back up with them, just to hang out and get inspired. Every tour we do, we get inspired by the bands we play with. Like the band Prouns, who are just a three-piece, but they really know how to rock out. And the band Clot, they’re super professional and older than us, I almost felt like they were showing us up every night. And with The Jackal, this is the most impressed I’ve been with one of Zach Butcher’s bands.”

Porcupine continues their Summer tour dates next week with fellow Chicago-based band We Weren’t Invited, capped off by a hometown record release show on August 16th. Hernandez feels equally pumped for this run, giving his next tourmates accolades for being “so crazy, and they do whatever the fuck they want, it’s wild. I’m also excited to talk to people about the new record. We’ve been keeping it under wraps for a while, but I can’t wait to hear what people think of it. I love that our close friends love our music, and I don’t think their opinion doesn’t matter, but I really love listening to new people who are discovering Porcupine, even if they only like one song. It just makes me happy to know I did something cool like that.”

2026 will mark ten years since Porcupine formed, and Hernandez and Kiser have no plans to stop anytime soon. Reflecting on the milestone, Hernandez says, “I think we’re at a point now where we’re at our best, and we can make the best music we can with the best people.” Kiser agrees, “We’ve all grown up together, and the music is indicative of that. This current lineup is the best one that we’ve had. We all get along great.” I asked them exactly what “growing up” means to them as a band, not just the experience of doing so, but what they’re taking away from that experience.

Hernandez answers, “Even though I love a lot of what we did in the past, obviously I would do it a lot differently now. The first real thing I’m proud of is the Zomia record. I still listen back to that and go, ‘that’s crazy that I made that when I was 20.’ That was the first time I realized I could make something really interesting, and we got a nod from the Axe To Grind podcast, which I never thought could happen even back then. And then they premiered ‘Euphrosyne’ ahead of All Is Vapor coming out, which was so cool of them to do.

We just want to keep challenging ourselves with things that I don’t even know if they’re hardcore or not anymore, but then I’ll go write a 90-second straightforward hardcore song after that. I love how Smashing Pumpkins can mix together soft and heavy songs on the same album, like Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness, which was the first record that made me think, ‘I want to sonically emulate this.’ We’ve ventured through a lot of sonic experimentation, a lot of different types of hardcore. We’ve grown our networking skills since our first tour in 2018. We’re a lot more mature now. I’m really happy with this EP. I wouldn’t change a thing about it, and I didn’t compromise anything that makes us Porcupine, but every new record we do, I feel like we have to reintroduce ourselves. So I hope this is going to foreshadow whatever comes next, because it’s going to be even better.”

Logan Archer Mounts once almost got kicked out of Warped Tour for doing the Disturbed scream during a band’s acoustic set. He currently lives in Rolling Meadows, IL, but tells everyone he lives in Palatine.

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Inside Porcupine’s Altar of Vapor: An interview with Chicago’s masters of Dark Hardcore