Porcelain, Zastava, In Lieu

“Everything has changed,” sings frontman Steve Pike on “Apocalypse”, a track from Austin post-hardcore band Porcelain’s sophomore LP, Today’s Minor Victories; “Not for better but for worse.” It’s a sentiment that reflects a familiar millennial experience: comparing the world you dreamed of growing into with the constant indignities of late capitalism, the interminable imperialist violence around the globe, and the rapidly escalating climate crisis as we barrel past the point of no return. And on a micro scale, it reflects a stage of life marked by great tectonic shifts, by youthful innocence fully giving way to grief and disillusionment. On Today’s Minor Victories, apocalypse is both personally and literally the backdrop, and Porcelain’s churning, roiling, snarling post-hardcore is the tool of choice with which to hack through the weeds. The members of Porcelain — Pike, guitarist/vocalist Ryan Fitzgibbon, bassist Jordan Emmert and drummer Eli Deitz — are all Austin scene veterans, having played in locally beloved bands such as Exhalants, Super Thief, Votive and US Weekly. When they came together as Porcelain in 2022, it was with the benefit of more than a decade of orbiting each other and building mutual admiration. With Pike in particular growing tired of the more straightforward, aggressive noise rock that he had been playing for years, the idea was to gather four gifted musicians and play whatever felt right. “\[We threw\] everything on the table, and I feel like all four of our influences really came in,” Pike says. “Especially on this record, I feel like you can hear so many elements of everything that we all really enjoy.”