TurnstileTurnstile
Turnstile emerged in a landscape where hardcore had long been defined by strict parameters: a certain tempo, a certain energy, a certain audience. The band didn’t set out to change that from the outside, but from within — bringing melodies, rhythms and a sense of openness that at first felt contradictory but ultimately became inevitable. That is the essence of Turnstile: they don’t make hardcore softer or more commercial; they make it freer.
Glow On (2021) was the album that stopped the rock world in its tracks and established Turnstile as one of the most important forces of the 2020s. It wasn’t just acclaimed by critics; it pulled entirely different audiences into the same current — hardcore devotees, indie listeners, fans of electronic music and followers of mainstream rock. Turnstile managed something that had felt impossible for years: bringing back a kind of simplicity to rock, a directness that feels both immediate and radical.
Their music moves between eruptions of fury and flashes of euphoria, with pop melodies that seem to appear almost accidentally and rhythms that borrow as much from dance music as from punk. Turnstile doesn’t explain itself — the band simply moves through these influences with a natural ease, without anything sounding grafted on.
But the phenomenon around Turnstile isn’t just about breaking genre boundaries. They are a deeply communal band. Their live shows are experiences where intensity isn’t about aggression but momentum. The crowd isn’t pushed away — it’s invited closer; suddenly, hardcore becomes a space where you can both unleash and dance.
As Turnstile shifted from the back rooms of clubs to major stages, the energy didn’t dissipate — it multiplied. Their performances at large festivals led rock journalists to talk about a “new physics”: the sense that the crowd and the band share the same movement, with no clear origin for each impulse.
Turnstile is not just a hardcore band that found a bigger audience. They are one of the defining rock acts of the 2020s — a band that proves loud music can be raw and open, experimental and immediate, and that rock can still feel dangerous, warm and deeply alive.