New York, NY · hardcore · noise-punk · hardcore punk · noise rock

Show Me The Body

3 festivals played ↓

New York hardcore built around a banjo run through a wall of distortion — genuinely unlike anything else, and heavier than it has any right to be.

Show Me The Body formed in New York in 2012, built around Julian Cashwan Pratt, who sings and plays an amplified, heavily distorted banjo, alongside bassist Harlan Steed and drummer Noah Cohen-Corbett. Pratt and Steed met in ninth grade at Elisabeth Irwin High School, and Pratt's volunteer work at the Lower East Side space ABC No Rio drew him into New York's hardcore scene early on.

The banjo functions less as a folk instrument than as a source of grinding, metallic texture, placing the band somewhere between hardcore punk, noise rock and industrial. Early shows were staged under bridge overpasses, in alleys and basements rather than clubs, a pattern that carried into the band's long association with all-ages, community-run shows around New York.

Their debut album Body War appeared in 2016, taking on anti-capitalism, gentrification and police brutality across a stretch of harsh, experimental arrangements. Dog Whistle followed, shaped in part by a visit the band made to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum while touring Poland. It was written in Long Island City and recorded in Los Angeles before Trouble the Water arrived.

The group also operates the Corpus collective, releasing mixtapes such as Corpus I that draw in rappers, noise artists and hardcore bands from their orbit. The collective gave the band a way to keep working and stay connected to listeners when touring became impossible.

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hardcorenoise-punkhardcore punknoise rock