Hardcore music needs a purpose, it needs a reason to justify the abrasive guitars and the pained vocals. It only makes sense that in this time of political, climate and health unrest that My Fictions would rise again from the ashes. The Boston-based hardcore band is back with their first new material in seven years, an EP aptly titled Time Immemorial. It marks their first release since their sole full-length album Stranger Songs in 2014. It came about nearly on a whim, when a simple request for a band practice went out from guitarist Tyler Bradley. He, singer/bassist Bryan Carifio, and drummer Seamus Menihane soon found themselves in a studio in Philadelphia with producer Wyatt Oberholzer, who does some excellent work in bringing these six sonically bombastic, lyrically resigned songs to life.

The EP is thrillingly fun, mixing the cynicism and intensity with more than enough licks and unpredictable turns. “Psychic Readings” kicks the EP off with a deceptive status of normalcy, despite the onslaught of noise and riffs that kicks the song off. The song has a structure similar to that of a template rock song, a verse-chorus-verse affair with some strong melodic hints. This isn’t the only time the band flirts with conventionality – the title track has a guitar rhythm that’s a little easier on the ears than expected and has a sound that feels ‘bigger’ than any of the other tracks. The EP’s other songs, however, point much more towards a classic hardcore sound. “Fallacy” and “Endless” are both shorter bruisers, focused mostly on blunt force trauma. The former pummels for a little over two minutes, while the latter slows down and taps out before the two minute mark. “Oblivion,” situated between them, is also a face-buster, though it channels more of a raw punk energy before giving way to the only big breakdown on the EP. The closer, “Sin Eater,” is maybe the most grounded song on the release, which should be taken with a grain of salt. The song has a great central rhythm and sends the listener off with a pure concussion of a finale.

The lyrics of these songs are as fatalistic as the music is, if not more so. The EP is born of the idea of a failed prophecy, and all six songs tell tales of regret and miserable soul-searching. “Why must I burn the way I do / Engulf others in what I go through / The distance grows, the distance proves / I can’t sustain I can’t break through,” Carifio sings on the title track. Elsewhere on “Endless,” he pines, “Don’t give a fuck what’s ahead of me / Again I sink into apathy / This consciousness is a burden.” “I know I have to live with myself / But I can’t put that on someone else / What good would it do to continue this,” he sings on “Oblivion,” a song inspired by the gut-punch movie First Reformed. These songs sound tortured beyond their years, with six narrators ripping up journals and seeking out a reason to either live or die – though mostly the latter. The ferocity of the music is matched with a bitter, morbid sense of a mortality too far off.

Each of these six songs has something unique to offer, and each manages to totally separate from the others while maintaining a complementary feel. Relying too heavily on one structure can be a pratfall for hardcore bands, but My Fictions follow in the same footprints as bands like Converge and American Nightmare that have come from the relentlessly creative Boston hardcore scene. The EP is officially on streaming services today, and the band is playing a release show on October 2nd as part of the Illuminate My Heart Festival in Providence, Rhode Island.