NØ MAN

Washington D.C.’s NØ MAN is a necessary and much-needed voice in modern hardcore. Formed in 2017, the four-piece punk band has been alchemizing the personal and the political from the jump. Composed of members from Majority Rule, the band’s current aims go hand-in-hand with their past, sonically and thematically.

Their latest album, Glitter and Spit, is the band’s third full-length LP, solidifying their furious hardcore into a weapon of a record. Album opener “Eat My Twin” twists and refracts a mid-tempo riff into a sonic hammer, cracking open the record’s heaviness to come. Singer Maha Shami has fully come into her own as a frontperson, snarling out the most vicious vocals of her career on “Poison Darts.”

As the daughter of refugees, returning home to Palestine included witnessing firsthand the casual atrocities inflicted on her family. Though written before the current conflict’s boiling point, Glitter and Spit synthesizes the 70+ years of systemic violence carried out against Palestine and her own lived experiences. From school teachers and classmates telling her Palestine doesn’t exist, to being humiliated by soldiers at checkpoints when she visited her family, these many moments fuel the album’s lifeblood, coalescing on “Can’t Kill Us All.”

The band’s members, Matt Michel (guitar/vocals), Pat Broderick (drums), and Kevin Lamiell (Bass) helped lay the foundation for hardcore and screamo in Majority Rule from 1996 to 2004. Alongside the band, vocalist Maha Shami has been a longtime friend, giving a “cameo” guest vocal performance on Majority Rule’s “Packaged Poison” in 2004. When Majority Rule reunited in 2017 to perform multiple benefit shows, it ignited a desire to keep creating, and no one was better equipped to step in as front person than Shami.

Their energy and spirit have brought them together on tour with bands like Portrayal of Guilt, Darkest Hour, FAIM, Entry, and more. In 2023, they collaborated with former tourmates and fellow iconoclasts The HIRS Collective on the song “Sweet Like Candy.” They’ve also contributed to Secret Voice’s (the label of Touche Amore frontman Jeremy Bolm) compilation Balladeers, Redefined.