Angel Du$t: “Music and art are just side-projects for a lot of people, but that sh*t is my whole life”

Temperatures are plummeting. And not just in the myriad ice storms raging across North America this midwinter. Electricity is fading from society’s creative engines. Heat is seeping out of people’s passions for authentic invention. In 2026, the obnoxious rise of AI might grab most of the headlines, but far more troubling are the increasingly cynical attitudes of real life flesh-and-blood humans churning out content not to satisfy any need for self-expression but to play the algorithms and roll their dice in the increasingly lucrative game of TikTok virality.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes after another late night of noodling away and writing music for the hell of it, Justice Tripp regards those kind of creatives with unmasked disdain. Talking up COLD 2 THE TOUCH, the sixth album from his increasingly all-consuming indie-hardcore project Angel Du$t, we half expect him to explain that title is a nod to the icy darkness within. Instead, he says it’s a kind of lament for his fellow musicians who’ve let the fire die inside.

“Obviously there’s that obvious imagery of death,” he says. “But the title-track is specifically about that music and those artists that feel lifeless, like they’re just going through the motions. I’d like to think that this album is my response to that, my attempt to excite.”

Raising the heart-rate hasn’t always been the primary purpose for Angel Du$t. Emerging after Justice’s legendarily violent other band Trapped Under Ice, their rejection of macho posturing and incorporation of more lightweight sounds made it easy to categorise as a palette-cleanser. As recently as 2023’s Brand New Soul, Justice admits he was aiming for “not background music, but something very easy to relax to”, full of “loops and fun sounds”.

Right from the get-go, with Terror mainman Scott Vogel adding his considerable heft to opening track Pain Is A Must, COLD 2 THE TOUCH feels like a more engaging, essential proposition.

“There’s an epidemic of laziness,” Justice unpacks. “That might sound like some boomer shit, but in everything you love to do you need to be ready to sacrifice. With the way things are going and the coming of AI people want to give less and less of themselves. You can just type in a prompt and get a ‘song’. That’s so offensive to me. I started making music as a kid and right from day one, I’ve thrown caution to the wind and given all of myself to this. I spent a lot of time technically homeless and without stability of any sort. I’ve watched friends get cars and homes and get married. I never wanted for those things, because I was sacrificing for the thing that I loved: making music.

“I see a lot of people come to the world of hardcore and just try to take. ‘What does this have to offer me?’ ‘Can I be a celebrity?’ ‘If I make this one EP and tour, will my band be huge?’ A lot of people can’t handle it. Bands will do one or two tours and get on the internet to complain. Those people need to sit down and shut up. Stop complaining about what this is not and start making it what it should be. If you have a feeling or an opinion, do something to make it come to life.”

Admittedly, Justice could be accused of going about that a little too hard. Spooling through the shopping list of challenges he’s had to overcome just to get to this point, suffering ‘stroke symptoms’ after severely overworking himself, and enduring a manic episode feels indicative of behaviour that borders the obsessive-compulsive and outright self-destruction. He’s also refused to cut back touring despite living with autoimmune disease. And his head remains unbowed even as he finds himself traversing a world that lurches further into darkness with every passing day.

“I don’t want to make it sound like my life sucks,” he says, explaining the need for balance and perspective. “I have a great life. I’m very happy. But the world is pretty fucked-up. It’s scary. Everybody has their moments where you’re overworked and you can’t get ahead. We all see it. Some people are better at ignoring it than others. Music is a good way of acknowledging it.”

That darkness pulses at the heart of COLD 2 THE TOUCH. A captivating counterbalance between violence and vulnerability. The contrast between the woundedness of Jesus Head (‘Flesh and blood on a soul / Some carry a weight they never show’) or Zero (‘Coldest knife / Something that don’t sit right / A lonely cry from the dead of night’) and the fury of The Beat (‘Beat you like a drum… Now you’re so sorry for what you have done’) is at the centre of what makes this the most powerful Angel Du$t record to date. Rather than violence or machismo, Justice himself prefers to refer to the musical muscle beneath the skin as “danger”. And as much as Angel Du$t are still miles away from the brutality of Trapped Under Ice, there is an undeniable pull in that vicious direction.

“The clash between the vulnerable and the dangerous is everything,” he nods. “That’s the dichotomy of people. I’ve spoken with friends and collaborators many times over the years about wanting to explore both sides. I remember doing TUI and people expecting a certain look: shirtless and muscled. But then you read a lot of the lyrics and they’re about getting your feelings hurt or not feeling loved. There was a stereotype that people wanted, so it was a challenge, and music became about challenging that. Wearing a belly-shirt. Moving in a way that people call ‘gay’ onstage. I knew that made certain people uncomfortable – and I wanted them to be. The same way that when I see that personality-type in myself, I want to drive it away. This is the first batch of songs where I feel that dichotomy between the aggressive, the masculine, the dangerous and the vulnerable, the open. People talk about what we’re ‘trying to do’ on a record. What we’ve always tried to do is avoid territory that I’ve covered before. TUI is a very dark band, and I’ve always had this thing where Angel Du$t is different. I’m trying to avoid those TUI-isms because I want that divide between the two. But the reality is I have a musical identity, a thing that I do well, a thing that’s natural to me. People are dynamic. Sometimes we’re happy, sometimes we’re sad, sometimes we’re angry. And I want to convey all of that. Often the things that come most naturally to me are anger, fear and despair. When they are, sometimes you’ve just got to let them happen.”

Detractors have long criticised Angel Du$t as Justice’s attempt to leave hardcore behind. Those critics could see the new heavier version as a kind of backtracking. But that misses the point.

“It’s not at all!” he half-sighs. “I love hardcore music. But I want to contribute to that by expanding on what it is and what can make sense in that spectrum. I also love other things and I want to experiment with those things in the context of a band that came from hardcore. Don’t get me wrong: I love playing shows in spaces or with bands that aren’t really hardcore. But it’s never been something that I’ve tried to avoid. It’s always been home to me and the people in my band.”

Indeed, Turnstile’s first-ever Kerrang! cover came with a whole sidebar paying tribute to Justice as the big brother of the Baltimore scene. Explaining his attitude towards the blurred boundaries of what actually constitutes a hardcore band in 2026, he refers back to his old friends. Delving deeper into sounds from indie, pop and post-rock at the expense of sudden impact they may be, but what difference does it make when they so obviously still love the scene they came from? And when their success drives the demand for kids to pick up guitars and write crunchy riffs of their own?

Justice cracks a wry smile: “Even the people that are making the really extreme version of hardcore right now are making it as a response to Turnstile.”

Megalomaniacal as he can be about his own music, the need for cross-pollination and collaboration is integral to his current artistic vision. With old collaborators Brendan Yates, Pat McCrory and Daniel Fang now fully taken-up with the ’stile, a concrete line-up of Angel Du$t members has been cemented with drummer Nick Lewis and guitarist Jim Caroll joining existing six-stringer Steve Marino and bassist Zechariah Ghostribe. Aside from the aforementioned Scott Vogel appearance, COLD 2 THE TOUCH also features Wes Eisold of American Nightmare (Zero), Patrick Cozens of Restraining Order (Downfall), Taylor Young of Twitching Tongues (The Beat) and Jim’s old partner in Pure Love, Frank Carter (Man On Fire). Justice proudly points out that American Football multi-instrumentalist Steve Lamos plays trumpet on Zero, too.

Beyond the realms of Angel Du$t, discussions of side-projects and prioritisation rankle with Justice now even more than before. Trapped Under Ice may be the band with which he came to prominence, but the idea that it’s anything like still his primary focus is absurd given they’ve played “maybe 20 shows in the last 10 years, when Angel Du$t have played about 800”. Part of the reason he sat up through the night before our interview is he’s set a goal for himself to drop five bodies of work in 2026, across Angel Du$t, Trapped Under Ice, bedroom pop solo project Cold Mega and any number of other projects with other friends. And every one is worth its own attention and discussion.

“Saying ‘side-project’ is like ‘side-chick’,” he shrugs. “There is no side-band. You just make music and art. Whatever is possible in my life, I’m pursuing it. And where some people sidestep between lots of different side-projects, I never have. My ‘side-project’ plays more than everybody else’s main bands. In the same way, some people now say TUI is my side-project and that’s equally offensive. Music and art are just side-projects for a lot of people. But that shit is my whole life.”

And yet, for all his collaborations and connections through the world of hardcore and wider music, arguably COLD 2 THE TOUCH’s most definite statement is 111-second banger I’m The Outside. Partially a play on the classic outsider declarations that so many young punks make early in their career, there’s something to be seen both in Justice’s specific phrasing and the fact it arrives this deep into his career. Much as he’s a figurehead, Mr. Tripp always walks his own way. No apologies.

“As alternative people – hardcore, punk, whatever – we’re defined by being outsiders,” he signs off. “It’s about making music as a response to what’s going on around us. That’s what punk did before hardcore. And it’s what rock’n’roll did before that. The name changes, but it’s the same shit. We make outsider music. We dress like we’re outside the normal. Me saying I am the outside definitely isn’t about being ‘more punk’ or better than anyone else. It’s that I’ve existed on the outside for so long it’s what I’ve become. Having a normal life is no longer an option. I can’t come back inside.”

COLD 2 THE TOUCH is released on February 13 via Run For Cover

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