EP REVIEW: With Love // With Rage by Initiate
EP artwork for With Love // With Rage by Initiate
Initiate are undergoing a very specific kind of evolution. Since “Cerebral Circus”, the band has not seemed interested in simply becoming heavier, faster, or more aggressive to fit within the hardcore scene. Their progression has always been driven by a desire to explore what intensity means beyond sheer impact. On “With Love // With Rage”, Initiate are less focused in the collision of styles that made their previous work so exciting and more concerned with the undercurrents lying beneath them.
The title states the EP’s argument outright, and the songs bear it out both in substance and in style. Crystal Pak has described these songs as letters written to another person, to her friends or even to herself, with “With Love” and “With Rage” representing two feelings that can exist simultaneously. This is not a record where anger gives way to vulnerability. Instead, both constantly complete one another, as gratitude can exist alongside frustration. Building on Too Much (single, 2025), “With Love // With Rage” feels like a more distilled chapter for Initiate.
Where “Cerebral Circus” embraced a wider spectrum of influences, from melodic hardcore and post-hardcore to crossover energy, alternative metal and atmospheric experimentation, this EP appears far more deliberate. The band is a bit driving away from those elements but not abandoning them as they belong to an ongoing broader movement of hardcore acts (Turnstile chief among them, with influences carried in Numb The Pain) pushing the genre’s boundaries outward.
The clearest progression comes from the way Initiate approach their instrumentation and production. Their earlier material often relied on the friction between different guitar techniques, with the weight and urgency of hardcore meeting melody and atmosphere which worked really well. Here, those elements have become much more intertwined. Melody is no longer positioned against force.
The guitars open the arrangements considerably, allowing the band to move between emotions more organically but this comes with a general loss of diversity in sounds and groove. Still, they introduce new colours into their music in the last song, Future Saving Grace, from cleaner vocal arrangements to the piano, strings and expanded textures. Also, Crystal’s vocals benefit considerably from this new vision. Her scream has never been so highlighted with far greater nuance.
The construction of the EP's songs plays a major role in bringing that vision to life, reflecting the band's constant pursuit of their own singular brand of intensity. Burn After Reading is a prime example. The fast sections are driven as much by Crystal’s rhythmic delivery and the drums as by the guitars themselves, while the song constantly builds without ever delivering the expected breakdown. Rather than expending all its energy in one explosive moment, Initiate resolves that built-up energy through a sharp and memorable chorus. By doing so, Initiate have developed a very reliable pattern built around short bursts of intensity, with carefully placed bridges that make the choruses hit harder. Delusions demonstrates just how well that works effectively, balancing distorted guitar layers, pockets of silence and a final surge that moves away from a conventional hardcore ending. Crystal’s explanation of the song, describing anger towards the system while refusing to let that anger erase the good around her, captures exactly the tension the EP keeps returning to. Rage is present, but it is never the whole story.
If Delusions explores frustration and conflict, Numb The Pain represents the other side of that equilibrium. From its opening bars, the song reveals a band increasingly interested in the full emotional range of hardcore and a willingness to expand the genre’s vocabulary. Written as a love song for her friends during a difficult period, Crystal transforms the usual language of confrontation into an expression of connection. These ideas naturally lead to the EP’s boldest turn. The most telling indication of where Initiate could head next arrives with Future Saving Grace. The track immediately changes the band’s usual dynamic, ushering the song in with a bass groove that surprisingly recalls the rhythmic warmth of Red Hot Chili Peppers more than traditional hardcore. From there, Initiate continue expanding their palette with new sounds towards the end of the song, building on the shift heard earlier in the record.
Structurally, the EP’s greatest strength also becomes its main limitation. Initiate have refined a formula that works remarkably well, but across its short runtime, certain compositional habits gradually reveal themselves. The vocal dynamics, melodic structures and build-ups remain strong, yet they read more as fine-tuning of familiar ideas and create a slight sense of repetition across multiple listens. Still, this feels less like a limitation than the beginning of a new era. “With Love // With Rage” is not a reinvention of Initiate. It is a sharper statement of who they are becoming. The band no longer needs to prove how many influences they can combine. They are discovering just how much weight a more intimate sound can carry. If this record represents a new species, it will be exciting to see what colored butterfly this caterpillar becomes. There is something unmistakably late-summer about this EP. It evokes the sensation of looking back on difficult times with greater understanding, accepting contradictions instead of fighting them. Initiate continues to prove that hardcore does not have to choose between brutality and vulnerability. Sometimes boldness means embracing one's own contradictions.
FFO: Touché Amoré, Defeater, One Step Closer
SCORE: 7/10
With Love // With Rage is out now on all streaming platforms via Blue Grape Music.
