Colorado noisemakers Public Opinion channel a run of hard luck into their most infectious, wired-up record yet…

Words by Felix Bartlett | 04 Aug, 2026

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Even before Kevin Hart started writing songs alone in his bedroom in 2020, Denver’s hardcore scene was already littered with the kind of stalled projects and false starts that inspired his frustration. Amongst the punk lifers he’d go on to recruit into a full band were guitarist Kevin Johnson and bassist Sebastian Stanley, together forming Public Opinion. Now with a debut album, an EP and a run of notable champions behind them, they’ve assembled a second record that deals candidly with exhaustion, routine and the stubborn refusal to quit.

With years of grinding away in bands that went nowhere behind him, it’s understandable that this sophomore effort wrestles with the contradictions that come from staying in a scene that keeps letting you down. Bitterness and self-recrimination swirl around defiance and dark humour throughout, with the tedium of daily life described bluntly on Closed Captioning, its jarring alarm-clock sample puncturing the track’s ferocious beat. These feelings resonate beyond Hart’s specific situation, particularly when Modern Convenience harnesses outright spite with the help of I Am The Avalanche’s Vinnie Caruana, and When Kevin Gets Free turns garage-rock excess into something close to release.

The latter tune finds the band at their most unrestrained, but for the most part Public Opinion fashion a taut, hook-driven take on noughties guitar rock. Their riffs sometimes carry a whisper of The Hives on Lucky Me or The White Stripes on the whip-fast Flowers By Irene, while elsewhere songs like I Pay Everyone I Still Talk To evoke the more melodic approach of Militarie Gun or Drug Church. Meanwhile, Hart’s cracked, weary vocals provide an emotional focus that can give the album’s catchiest choruses, not least on opener Balloon Man Running, a hint of the way Drug Church’s Patrick Kindlon imports wit and world-weariness into modern hardcore.

Elsewhere, Epitaph finds the band at their most exposed, its sparse piano giving Hart room to sit with quiet, unglamorous grief, while Enhancement Talent answers with something closer to warmth, and the title track pulls the record’s hardcore roots and radio-ready hooks together for a fitting close. The band’s evidently sharp songwriting instincts are presented without recourse to overreach, everything here built to be shouted back in a packed room. But if this scrappy energy occasionally trades depth for immediacy, the sheer conviction behind this record remains an infectious, well-earned triumph.

Verdict: 💀💀💀💀

For fans of: Drug Church, Militarie Gun, Basement

The Curse Of Public Opinion is released August 7 via SideOneDummy Records.