On paper, Bloody Pineapples should have been a throwaway curiosity. A multi-national project born out of URM collab competitions, fronting a self-declared new subgenre ‘pineapplecore’ which sounds like the kind of joke that usually dies on Discord. In reality, their self-titled hardcore album “Bloody Pineapples” is one of the sharpest, most professionally executed hardcore records of the year, and it just happens to be having far more fun than most of its peers.
Bloody Pineapples started life in 2020 as six musicians scattered around the globe writing for the URM Collab Smash competition, eventually coalescing around a core creative unit of Jake (guitars), Toby (guitars/production) and Luke (vocals). Since then they’ve dabbled in black metal, death metal, metalcore and even a 13-second grindcore stunt track, released many stand alone singles, an EP and a full-length, and quietly built out their own hybrid sound in ‘pineapplecore’.
2025 has been the year they stopped being a clever studio project and became a live band with real momentum: USA support slots for the likes of (hed) PE, headline shows in Norwich UK and Seattle USA, and UK festival appearances in Cambridge and Ipswich. This has created the kind of word-of-mouth buzz you don’t buy with ads. The traditional hardcore community may not quite know what to do with them yet, but on this record, Bloody Pineapples make a compelling argument that you can play real hardcore and still admit that this whole thing is, on some level, ridiculous.
Clocking in at 15 minutes across eight tracks, “Bloody Pineapples” wastes no time. “Brain Debt” opens with a whiplash blend of two-step stomp, frantic chord stabs and deathcore-adjacent chugs, the kind of opener that feels purpose-built to test how solid the venue floor really is. It’s also your first taste of what sets this band apart: the songs are short and often silly on the surface, but structurally tight and meticulously arranged. There’s a professionalism here that goes far beyond the in-jokes.
“Backin’ Off” leans harder into classic hardcore. A blunt, mid-tempo groove, designed for immediate crowd participation, making it one of the most straight-ahead tracks on the record, and one of the most effective. Where a lot of modern “fun” hardcore collapses into parody, Bloody Pineapples maintain just enough menace in the guitar tone and vocal delivery to keep things grounded. You can laugh with this band, but you’re still going to get hit in the chest.
With “Hunted”, the tempo shifts, dissonant chord voicings and more oppressive atmosphere pull the record into darker territory without derailing the energy. This is where producer Toby Allen’s fingerprints really show: the guitars retain a cutting high-mid presence, but there’s enough low-end punch to carry the slower, more menacing passages. It’s bright by design, and you can hear every pick scrape and every syncopated accent, yet it never drifts into the anaemic over-compression that kills so many modern heavy records.
“Barbarians” (featuring James Wallace from DUDESMELL) is the first real declaration of pineapplecore intent. It crams a ridiculous amount into its 97 seconds: gang chants, a borderline death-metal main riff, a guest vocal that sounds like it’s been dragged bleeding out of a basement show, and a breakdown that lands with the subtlety of a scaffold collapse. It’s playful, yes, but it’s also vicious. This is where it becomes obvious why some corners of the hardcore scene have dismissed them as “Fisher-Price hardcore”: the hooks are too obvious, the fun too visible. The punchline, of course, is that Bloody Pineapples can out-play and out-produce plenty of the bands throwing that insult around.
Then there’s “This Pizza Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song” (with Enrique de la Paz). The title looks like a shitpost; the track is anything but. Beneath the humour sits a tightly coiled bounce-riff borrowed from System of a Down, and with a call-and-response vocal pattern that is tailor-made for live chaos. The guest feature adds just enough tonal contrast to make the final breakdown feel like a pile-on rather than just another shift down a gear.
“hAppy” and “Salt The Wound” form the heart of the record. The former is the closest Bloody Pineapples come to modern hardcore: a little more melody, a little more emotional edge, but still rooted in thick, swinging riffs rather than sugary chorus drops. “Salt The Wound”, by contrast, might be the most straight-up nasty track here, all sharpened down-picks and rhythmic jabs, the sort of song that reminds you this band has spent time in deathcore, black metal and everything in between. If you’ve ever wondered what would happen if you threw mid-2000s breakdown culture, 90s hardcore pacing and 2020s production into the same blender, this is your answer.
Closing with the self-titled “Bloody Pineapples” feels almost too neat, but it works. It’s the record’s manifesto track: a compressed summary of everything they’ve been doing for the previous seven songs; shouts, blasts, bounce, sing-backs, and a final, lung-emptying gang vocal. It’s not the “best” song here in a technical sense, but it is the one that most clearly captures why this project exists: to build something genuinely heavy on top of an unapologetically playful idea.
From a production standpoint, “Bloody Pineapples” is already operating at a level many more established bands would kill for. Mixed and mastered with a modern, high-definition sheen, it manages to sound huge without smothering the performances. The drums cut through with clarity but don’t dominate; the bass is present enough to glue the riffs together; the vocals sit on top without feeling artificially inflated. Given how often underground bands sacrifice impact at the altar of DIY “authenticity”, it’s refreshing to hear a record that understands that sounding good and meaning it are not mutually exclusive.
Where the album really earns its place, though, is in the intent. This is not a parody record pretending to be heavy; it’s a heavy record that refuses to pretend that our subculture isn’t absurd. Bloody Pineapples are perfectly capable of writing hardcore-derived deathcore, metalcore, etc.; their previous catalogue proves that. Here, they deliberately choose the straight hardcore, lean into it and then execute it with a level of discipline that belies the jokes. Hardcore often takes itself so seriously that it forgets where it came from: sweaty, chaotic, cathartic rooms full of people shouting dumb lines at each other over three chords and a breakdown. This album remembers, and updates the formula for 2025 without sanding off the edges.
Will this convert every old-guard hardcore fan? Probably not. Some people will always equate visible fun with a lack of credibility, and Bloody Pineapples aren’t here to argue with them. They’re too busy packing out rooms in London, Ipswich, Eugene, Seattle and beyond, turning casual curiosity into repeat offenders in the pit. For the rest of us, “Bloody Pineapples” is proof that you can push the genre sideways without losing the core values: intensity, community, and songs that make you move whether you want to or not.
As albums go, this is a statement. As a blueprint for where pineapplecore might go next, it’s a dangerous one.
Rating: 8/10
Release Date: 14 February 2025
Label: MetalVision Records
Writer: Andy
Tracklist:
- Brain Debt
- Backin’ Off
- Hunted
- Barbarians (feat. James Wallace from DUDESMELL)
- This Pizza Makes Me Feel Like I’m On This Song (feat. Enrique de la Paz)
- hAppy
- Salt The Wound
- Bloody Pineapples
