Words and Photos by Matt DeBenedictis
When it comes to crossover—the volatile intersection of hardcore punk and thrash metal—there is a specific DNA that makes it infectious: groove, anger, and fun. Mix in a healthy dose of Slayer and Cro-Mags riffs, and you have the blueprint for Atlanta’s Turn Cold.
“If you can’t fight your boss to it, we don’t give a shit,” bassist Twitch says of the band’s songwriting ethos.
True lifers in the Atlanta heavy music underground, vocalist Sten Mostrom, guitarist Brett Butler, bassist Twitch, and drummer Matt Karoglou have logged years playing together across the local scene in outfits like Dead Oath, Career Path, and Dropout. While those projects laid the groundwork, they didn’t always hit the exact sweet spot.
“Dropout, we kind of felt was always too punk for the metalheads and too metal for the punks,” Mostrom explains. “So like, it never really gelled 100 percent with a crowd. Like, I don’t know, we kind of missed the market.”
Like countless bands, Dropout was laid to rest during the COVID lockdowns. Never ones to sit idle, the four used the downtime to build something sharper and meaner to fit the times. Butler had long talked about starting a project anchored in classic crossover riffs.
“We started playing together again, and it was like, this is kind of what we’ve always wanted to do,” says Karoglou. “Once we started doing it, it just felt right.”
For Butler, keeping the creative engine running wasn’t optional—it was survival. “If we’re not doing this, then we’re all way less happy and super bored,” he says. “That’s how this band came to be, and it’s the reason that we still do it. We don’t know what else to do with ourselves.”
That era of isolation also injected the band with a lot of fuel for lyrics while watching the world unravel.
“With the political climate at that point, there was a lot to be angry about,” Mostrom says. “Everyone was sitting at home watching their TVs, and you see people storming the Capitol and standing on people’s necks and behaving badly when you know everybody’s watching. It was peak toilet-people season. So there’s a lot of inspiration for some angry shit.”
Following a string of early EPs and their 2025 full-length, Violent Breed, Turn Cold have rapidly carved out a reputation not just for furious, hook-heavy riffs, but for the cathartic energy of their live sets.
“When we get up there, it’s a release for us, for sure,” Karoglou says. “The subject matter is serious, but the music is fun. People can pick up on us having fun, so the best thing in the world for us is to watch other people lose their shit because we’re also losing our shit.”
That energy is a feedback loop between the band and the crowd instantly. Expect reckless behavior when Turn Cold plays.
“The band goes crazy, so the crowd goes crazy,” Mostrom laughs. “And if the crowd’s going crazy, the band’s like, ‘Oh, the crowd’s going crazy,’ and that ramps everything up. Before you know it, I’m like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna bite this kid.’ And then the crowd goes even crazier—like, ‘Get away, don’t get bit!’”
When Turn Cold emerged from the pandemic era, there was a revitalized Atlanta hardcore landscape. Like any hardcore scene, it moves in waves; prior to 2020, the tide had been low, dominated largely by sludge and doom metal, where losing a single all-ages room could dry up hardcore shows for a while.
“Foundation started playing again and the shit blew off,” Butler recalls. “I feel like Atlanta has a very, very healthy hardcore and DIY scene right now. It’s very cool to see.”
According to Karoglou, the shift goes deeper than just venue availability—it’s a cultural reset.
“It’s no longer cringe and fucking lame to care anymore, which is so important,” Karoglou says. “Hardcore is built on caring about shit. For such a long time, it was cool to not care or to have this laissez-faire attitude. Now people actually care about shit because there’s real shit to care about, and I think that translates to people wanting to make art that actually matters. The best art comes out of struggle anyway, and there’s more struggle now than there has been.”
Turn Cold are carrying that momentum straight into their latest release. You can stream the new title track, “Disaster Recipe,” right now ahead of the full four-song EP dropping on November 30. Compared to 2025’s Violent Breed, the new material leans even harder into the classic styles that inspired the band when they started.
“It’s got some bouncier, groovier parts, and it’s also got more almost ’80s metal-type riffs—just drawn more on that old-school New York crossover,” Butler says of the EP’s direction.
To capture that punch, the band reunited with engineer John Douglas—who previously helmed their Chewing Glass EP—and tapped Daniel Schmuck for mixing duties. Rather than relying on modern studio shortcuts, Butler prioritized analog grit.
“We spent a lot of time getting good guitar tone from my gear, not using plugins or any computer shit,” Butler notes. “Just working a lot on the tone to make sure it sounded good.”
In keeping with the ethos that brought them up, Turn Cold are releasing Disaster Recipe independently through their own imprint, JST BZN LTD.
“We just talked about doing it independently for a while because we did all our other releases that way,” Butler explains. “It wasn’t really something we felt like we needed help with. We’ve always been DIY at the core, so it’s not like it’s something we couldn’t just do ourselves. And in the future, it would be cool to work with some other Atlanta bands and put some other records out, maybe.”
Turn Cold’s “Disaster Recipe” is streaming now on Bandcamp, with the full four-song EP out November 30 via JST BZN LTD. Before then, the band hits the road for a run through Virginia, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee, starting November 19. Catch them live if you can, but watch out. They might bite.