“Let's Go As Hard and Fast As We Can!”

Hardcore cult heroes Turnstile are poised to be one of the breakout bands of 2022. Guitarist Pat McCrory discusses their “emotional” return to playing live– and how to experiment without losing your edge...

- By Jenna Scaramanga. Photographs by Spencer Chamberlin

It’s February 2022, and Turnstile are thrilled to be back in the UK. When Baltimore’s hardcore heroes last played London in two years ago, they didn’t know when – or if – they’d be back. As guitarist Pat McCrory recalls, “The world was shutting down. We had to play a London show and then fly home instead of the rest of the tour. We all caught Covid on the way home, and we’re like, ‘This might be the last show in London that we play.’” To everyone’s relief, Turnstile have come back harder than ever, and Pat is buzzing. “We just played the Roundhouse and Nottingham Rock City, and the shows have just been purely magic.”

The quintet - Pat McCrory plus vocalist Brendan Yates, lead guitarist Brady Ebert, bassist ‘Freaky’ Franz Lyons and drummer Daniel Fang - are known for leaving everything on the stage, and the return to gigging was a rude shock to their bodies: “Most of us are pretty active, playing sports or skateboarding or lifting weights,” Pat says. “Everybody’s got energy to burn so we were like, ‘Yeah, we’ll be good!’ First show, my neck was so twerked out of place I couldn’t look up for two days. We came back and we felt like we were 20 years older. We planned a bunch of one-off shows to knock the rust off. The first one we did was in Baltimore. We were all super rusty and everybody’s super emotional. We sucked so bad but it was awesome! We worked with those little shows and between ourselves we’re like, ‘Yo, get those neck stretches in! Stretch your hamstrings! Let’s go!’”