🔥🖤 EP Review: INITIATE – With Love // With Rage

Artist: Initiate
EP: With Love // With Rage
Genre: Hardcore / Melodic Hardcore / Post-Hardcore
Release: 7 August 2026
Label: Blue Grape Music
Producer: Zach Tuch
Tracks: 5

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸 5/5 Guitars

Love and rage.

Two emotions that seem like they should exist at completely opposite ends of the human experience.

Except they don’t, do they?

Sometimes the people we love most are the people capable of making us absolutely bloody furious. Sometimes anger comes from caring too much. Sometimes vulnerability requires more strength than aggression.

That’s the emotional battleground Southern California hardcore outfit Initiate charge headfirst into on With Love // With Rage.

And across just five tracks, they manage to cram in more emotional whiplash than some bands achieve across an entire album.

This isn’t hardcore trapped inside one rigid formula.

There are serrated riffs.

There are breakdowns begging for a circle pit.

There are screams from vocalist Crystal Pak that sound capable of removing paint from venue walls.

But there are also shimmering guitars, acoustic textures, ethereal melodies and moments where the band suddenly pull everything back rather than automatically smashing through another breakdown.

Initiate aren’t abandoning hardcore.

They’re stretching it.

And With Love // With Rage is considerably more interesting because of it.

Right then.

Five tracks.

Two emotional extremes.

Let’s have it. 🔥🖤

💿

Official Track Listing

1. Burn After Reading
2. Delusions
3. Shadowboxing
4. Numb The Pain
5. Future Saving Grace

🔥

Track-by-Track Review

1. Burn After Reading

Well, there’s a title that doesn’t exactly suggest peaceful reconciliation. 😂

Burn After Reading opens the EP with Initiate immediately demonstrating their ability to balance chaos with atmosphere.

The guitars have bite.

The rhythm section hits hard.

And Crystal Pak sounds absolutely ferocious.

But underneath the aggression there’s already something more complicated developing.

This isn’t anger for anger’s sake.

There’s hurt behind it.

Frustration.

Emotional fallout.

The sort of rage that comes from something actually mattering.

A cracking opening statement.

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

2. Delusions

Things get increasingly uncomfortable.

Delusions carries a restless quality, with the instrumentation constantly feeling like it’s tightening around you.

Initiate could easily resolve that tension by simply throwing in another enormous breakdown every thirty seconds.

They don’t.

Instead, the band allow atmosphere and melody to exist alongside the heavier elements.

That restraint makes the aggressive moments considerably more powerful when they arrive.

There’s serious pit potential here.

But there’s also serious songwriting.

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

3. Shadowboxing

The title says plenty.

Fighting something that isn’t physically standing in front of you.

Memories.

Anxiety.

Yourself.

Shadowboxing feels appropriately conflicted.

There’s movement everywhere, but emotionally the song seems trapped between attack and retreat.

Pak’s vocals give everything enormous urgency while the guitars move between hardcore aggression and more expansive alternative textures.

It’s the sound of an internal argument becoming external.

And it’s bloody good.

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

4. Numb The Pain

Here’s the track that demonstrates just how far Initiate are willing to stretch themselves.

Rather than immediately attacking, Numb The Pain introduces melodic softness and acoustic elements.

And suddenly everything feels considerably more exposed.

That’s important.

Because hardcore often presents strength through confrontation.

Initiate ask whether vulnerability can be equally powerful.

Then, naturally, the heavier elements arrive.

But because the song has given itself room beforehand, they hit harder.

It’s not simply quiet-loud-quiet songwriting.

There’s genuine emotional logic behind the dynamics.

One of the EP’s finest moments.

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

5. Future Saving Grace

And here’s where everything lands.

Future Saving Grace feels like the other side of the emotional storm.

Not necessarily a happy ending.

Initiate aren’t suddenly firing confetti cannons and announcing everything’s sorted.

But there’s something approaching hope.

After an EP exploring anger, confusion, pain and vulnerability, the closing track feels like looking forward rather than permanently backwards.

The aggression remains.

So does the uncertainty.

But there’s possibility too.

And that makes Future Saving Grace an excellent closer.

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

🔥

The Breakdown

🎤

Vocals — 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Crystal Pak is phenomenal.

Her scream has genuine physical force, but With Love // With Rage demonstrates that the band’s emotional power doesn’t depend entirely on volume.

There’s vulnerability beneath the fury.

And that makes the fury considerably more convincing.

🎸

Guitars — 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Draven Carter and Manning Gray move comfortably between metallic hardcore riffs, atmospheric alternative textures and softer melodic passages.

Nothing feels unnecessarily bolted together.

🎸

Bass — 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Michael Morales provides serious weight underneath the guitars, particularly when the EP starts leaning towards its heavier side.

🥁

Drums — 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

John Hodge brings exactly the required amount of violence.

The grooves hit.

The faster passages fly.

And when breakdown territory arrives?

Necks are endangered.

🎧

Production — 🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

Zach Tuch gives the band plenty of punch without sanding away their personality.

The softer elements have room to breathe while the hardcore sections still sound absolutely enormous.

🏆

Standout Tracks

🔥 Burn After Reading

🥊 Shadowboxing

🖤 Numb The Pain

🌅 Future Saving Grace

❤️

WITH LOVE

The clever thing about With Love // With Rage is that the title isn’t simply some cool phrase slapped across the artwork.

It’s fundamental to how these songs operate.

The softer moments aren’t weaknesses.

They’re part of the same emotional language as the aggression.

Friendship.

Comfort.

Reflection.

Connection.

Vulnerability.

These things can carry just as much intensity as screaming into a microphone.

Sometimes more.

😡

WITH RAGE

But don’t worry.

Initiate haven’t gone soft.

Not even remotely. 😂

When this EP decides to throw hands, it absolutely bloody throws them.

The riffs are sharp.

The breakdowns hit.

Pak sounds furious.

And the band’s hardcore DNA remains completely intact.

That’s what makes the experimentation work.

Initiate aren’t running away from what they were.

They’re expanding what they can be.

🤘

The Riff Report Verdict

Five songs.

That’s it.

And that’s plenty.

With Love // With Rage doesn’t hang around long enough to become bloated.

There’s no filler.

No pointless interlude involving someone whispering over rain noises for six minutes.

Initiate arrive.

Make their point.

Flatten the room.

Disappear.

But what makes this EP particularly exciting isn’t simply how heavy it gets.

It’s what happens between the heavy bits.

Initiate understand that contrast creates impact.

A breakdown feels heavier after silence.

A scream feels more desperate after melody.

Anger feels more meaningful when you understand what caused it.

That’s where With Love // With Rage really shines.

The EP exists between emotional extremes.

Love and anger.

Comfort and pain.

Confidence and confusion.

Softness and violence.

Rather than choosing one side, Initiate recognise that humans frequently carry all of them simultaneously.

Messy?

Absolutely.

But that’s life, innit?

And hardcore has always been at its best when it takes those messy emotions and turns them into something communal.

Something people can scream together.

Something capable of turning a sweaty room full of strangers into a temporary family.

With Love // With Rage does exactly that.

THE RIFF REPORT RATING

🎸🎸🎸🎸🎸

5/5 GUITARS

Five tracks. Two emotional extremes. Zero wasted time.

Initiate have delivered a short, sharp and surprisingly beautiful blast of modern hardcore that proves vulnerability can hit every bit as hard as a breakdown.

With love. With rage. With riffs. 🔥🖤🤘