Colin Young on HardLore's influence, Twitching Tongues' comeback, "IG Reels hardcore," more
"There’s a specific kind of inauthenticity that sickens me," says the podcaster and musician whose taste transformed hardcore.
Hardcore music has been around for nearly 50 years, but Colin Young is an anomaly within the culture. The 35-year-old is the host of the HardLore Podcast; a core member of the bands Twitching Tongues, God's Hate, Holy Blade, Deadbody, and over a dozen others; and the owner of two record labels, HardLore Records and the newly launched Plan X Records. It's not necessarily the amount of work Young does that distinguishes him from his most prolific forebearers, but the degree of influence that his music, media, and taste have had on the subculture he's committed his life to.
Of his many endeavors, Young is best known for HardLore, the YouTube-based music program that he started in 2022 with his late friend and former co-host, Harms Way guitarist Bo Lueders. What began as a loosely formatted hardcore talk show has, over the last four years, evolved into a weekly dispatch of longform interviews with prominent hardcore musicians. HardLore's episodes are driven by deep research and granular curiosity, but the naturally affable host keeps the tone personable and lighthearted, making the hours-long discussions exceedingly watchable for nerds and new-jacks alike.
In 2025, HardLore's influence was increasingly saturating the culture, and content-wise, the show was really beginning to hit its stride as the two co-hosts locked into a reliable format. Sadly, HardLore soon suffered a tremendous loss when, in April 2026, Lueders tragically took his own life at the age of 38. Devastated by the death of his best friend, Young put HardLore on pause before rebooting it as a solo entity a couple months later, with the motto "For Bo, Forever" serving as his new guiding principle.
Since returning with Young at the helm, the show's viewership has ballooned while its breadth of coverage keeps expanding into punk (AFI, Saves the Day) and metal (Lamb of God, Mastodon) bands with hardcore ties. New HardLore episodes, even the ones with relatively obscure figures from the already niche subculture, regularly pull tens of thousands of YouTube views in a matter of days. The show's game specials, where notable guests construct hardcore brackets or answer genre-specific Jeopardy questions, are always kindling for internet discourse, and surely inform the personal tastes of HardLore's younger-leaning viewership.
HardLore's probably the most popular and influential hardcore-centric media entity of all time, which puts Young in a very unique position. Reluctantly or not, he's become a figurehead of the genre whose opinions and perspectives carry a lot of weight within the subculture. "I've accidentally found my way into being a rather successful journalist without a lick of training," Young told me during a long conversation in late October.
And then there's his music. God's Hate, the beatdown band Young drums in and writes for, and that's fronted by professional wrestler Brody King, dropped one of the decade's biggest (and best) hardcore albums in 2021. Twitching Tongues, the eerily melodic and malevolently heavy hardcore band Young sings in, reunited in 2023 more beloved than ever after unceremoniously disintegrating at the end of the 2010s. Young's older brother Taylor plays in both of those bands (and many others), and is a well-regarded producer who's recorded albums for Terror, Militarie Gun, and Drain.
Over the last 15 years, hardcore writ large has gotten heavier sounding, darker feeling, and more metal looking than it was before the Youngs became two of the genre's most hardworking participants. They, and Colin in particular, are by no means the sole pioneers of the artform's metallurgic evolution, but I think their role has been significant. I've been wanting to speak with Colin about his position in hardcore for a long time, and last month, I spent an hour-and-a-half doing just that. Our interview includes the following topics:
How doing HardLore has changed his relationship with hardcore and music media. The scourge of "4K IG Reels HC" infecting the genre. The slow rise, swift fall, and unlikely resurgence of Twitching Tongues, one of the most singular hardcore bands of the 21st century. How having his spirit crushed, first by negative reactions to his music, then by the loss of several dear friends, reshaped his outlook on art and life. The "Oppenheimer-esque feeling" of being a scene leader, and his recent struggles with overexposure.
Plus, his brushes with mainstream metal dickheads, what, in his mind, makes a good metalcore band, the "guilt" of being a salesman, his desire to disappear forever, his goals for Plan X and HardLore Records, and the prospect of new music from Twitching Tongues, Deadbody, Holy Blade, and maybe even another new band. And so much more. The whole conversation, lightly edited and condensed for clarity, is available below for Chasing Sundays subscribers.