Blistered Brings "Unrelentingly Heavy Hardcore" to Churchill’s

Ten years ago at Walter C. Young Middle School, across the street from C.B. Smith Park, 13-year-old Lennon Livesay took the stage with two friends to perform as a nameless band for the school’s talent show. They covered Green Day’s “Brain Stew.”

“Obviously, it was terrible,” Livesay says of the performance. “We were all 13 and didn’t know what we were doing, but at the time, it was a lot of fun, so I guess that’s what matters.”

It didn’t seem like much then, but that trio would ultimately end up being Livesay’s first of many bands. Now, at age 23, the Pembroke Pines native’s latest concern is his hardcore band, Blistered.

“We draw influences from lots of different stuff,” says Livesay, the group’s vocalist. “But if you know Florida’s hardcore history, we try our best to pay homage to the greats from where we’re from, like Morning Again and Culture.”

Together for three years, with half the band’s members living in Tampa and the other in South Florida, Blistered has released two EPs — Reject Their Shame in November 2012 and Soul Erosion in 2014.

The band has since done two full U.S. tours and performed with big acts such as Take Offense, Mizery, and Discourse. Later this month, Blistered is set to perform at Philadelphia’s annual This Is Hardcore Festival — “It’s like the World Series of hardcore fests,” Livesay says — but before that, it’s hitting good ol’ Churchill’s.

At midnight Tuesday, Blistered released a stream of “Lash,” the first track off of its new full-length LP, The Poison of Self Confinement.

The album — put out by 6131 Records, which the band has been with since its second EP — consists of 10 new tracks of “just the most unrelentingly heavy hardcore we could write,” Livesay said. “We obviously weren’t setting out to reinvent the wheel or experiment or anything, just to write a really heavy record that doesn’t let up from start to finish.”

It took Blistered about eight months to write The Poison of Self Confinement, according to Livesay. “Our last record we wrote over the course of like a month, but for this one we really wanted to take our time and make sure there was no filler and it was all A-plus material.”

The album was available for purchase on CD, cassette, or vinyl format. For the vinyl first pressing, 1,500 records were available — 800 on clear yellow, 500 on purple, and 200 on white. By the end of that same day, the white ones were sold out.

“To me,” Livesay says, “it’s just a hardcore band with my friends, and it’s always shocking to see that somebody from some other town cares when we roll through.”

Blistered performs with Morning Again, Brethren, Homestretch, Guilty Conscience, and Livid Death. 8 p.m. Saturday, July 11, at Churchill’s Pub, 5501 NE Second Ave., Miami. Doors at 8 p.m. Must be at least 18 years old. Tickets cost $12 at the door.