Modern Krishnacore · 2018–now
Every history of Krishnacore calls it a flash — a few white-hot years and then gone. That was never quite true. The founders kept playing, and a generation raised on 108 and Shelter picked the mantra back up. Here's the part of the story that's still being written.
The founders, still going
The two poles never really closed. Both came back — on their own terms.
Ray Cappo brought Shelter back in 2018 with John Porcelly on guitar, Sammy Siegler (Youth of Today, CIV) on drums, and Chris Interrante on bass. Still an open hand, still touring — a full set in Hamden, Connecticut on April 4, 2024 proved the missionary pole hasn't dimmed.
108 regrouped for two furious comeback records — A New Beat from a Dead Heart (2007) and 18.61 (2010, mixed by Converge's Kurt Ballou) — before Rob Fish stepped away rather than dilute what the band meant. The reckoning pole, as heavy as ever.
The 2020s new wave
Younger devotees who grew up on the '90s records — not reviving a museum piece, but doing exactly what Shelter and 108 did: playing hardcore about Krishna because they mean it.
Los Angeles · est. 2021
An LA quintet — several of them veterans of other hardcore bands — who scrapped their first attempts and "just played what comes natural to us." Their self-titled Back to Godhead EP dropped October 8, 2021: fast, short, aggressive, recorded by Taylor Young at The Pit and mastered by Will Killingsworth. As they put it, "this one really represents who we are as devotees of Krishna, and as members of the local hardcore community."
Northern California / Central Valley · est. 2019
Krishna das came home to Fairfield after his college band Crucial Measures ended and channeled his devotion into something heavier. Named after a 108 song, Invocation is overtly spiritual, serious, and thematically heavy — influences run straight through 108, Prema, Bad Seed, and the Cro-Mags. Their debut EP Clarion Call arrived in December 2021, its title borrowed from a magazine published by his guru.
Listen: Bandcamp · Instagram · cassette via Contraband Goods
The revival isn't only new bands. Independent labels and reissues keep the catalog in print and hand it to younger listeners — NYSHYNGA's The Highest Class of Killing was remastered and reissued in December 2023, and labels like Contraband and New Age Records have carried the 2020s wave. The circuit that once moved through temples and tour vans now runs through Bandcamp pages and small-label cassettes, but it's the same current: hardcore as devotion.
The founders opened a door in 1990. Thirty years on, a new set of kids is still walking through it.
Know a current Krishnacore band we've missed? Send it to the archive →