Turnstile
Never Enough
ROADRUNNER
“Meditation” is probably one of the last words that comes to mind when thinking about hardcore. There’s only stillness in the taut anticipation before a mosh pit erupts. Genre aside, it’s also certainly not the first word you’d use to describe Baltimore’s Turnstile—a band known for their endless stage-diving antics, frontman Brendan Yates’ vocal acrobatics, or drummer Daniel Fang's pummeling percussion. But on Never Enough, their follow-up to 2021’s breakout album Glow On, Turnstile lean into the tension between explosiveness and a sudden resulting stillness. “It kind of just challenged the idea of, why do I need to keep moving?” Yates mused in a recent interview. “In some ways, there’s an idea of existing as a small speck in a big universe, which can bring peace to perspective.”
That sentiment reverberates throughout Never Enough, an album fascinated with exploiting momentum—and the sudden absence of it. This is an LP of repetitive sharp stops and curious shifts. Its tensest two minutes begin with a call-and-response offensive between Yates’ seared vocals and a biting guitar on “Sunshower,” only to anticlimactically fade into a numbing haze of flutes and synths. As its title suggests, the track is the sonic equivalent of sunlight breaking through storm clouds, a rainbow flickering into view after a tumultuous downpour. It’s an important chapter amid a full album that both distills and expands Turnstile’s essence—self-doubt shakes hands with resolve, and feeling lost still sounds like the light is about to find you. Guitars clash, angst swirls through the vocals, and somehow it all feels triumphant.
On “Dreaming,” Turnstile straddle the line between anxiety and excitement with joyous horns and saw-toothed guitars. “When I get to dreaming, then I know / Everything I fear is so real,” Yates insistently sings. A few seconds later, the percussion revs up and his tone takes on a breeziness before snapping back to urgency on the final line for the first chorus: “You’re fading away / A beautiful dream / The colors at play / All falling out of place.” But the second time around, Yates gives into the fantasy and its impermanence with less resistance. Moments like these show how Never Enough nestles into the space between hardcore and new wave, challenging the listener to stop keeping pace. It's an album that forces you outside of it. Rather than locking into a steady flow, it drops in breaks, ambient interludes, and sonic detours that seem to beg you to look up at the sky and remember that the world is bigger than the buzz in our minds.
Never Enough doesn’t hit with the same immediate dopamine rush achieved on Glow On. It doesn’t surge forward like a tidal wave, but it is unpredictable and taxing like a rip current. Some songs blur together in the mix, and the tracklist can feel jumbled. But those inconsistencies are often what make the album so compelling. It asks you to sit with discomfort, to find value in disorientation. It’s a record made to highlight the stillness instead of inspiring momentum. The powerhouse opening title track and its volatile successor “Sole” feel like warnings cautioning against ego, shallow validation, and the intoxicating dazzle of sudden celebrity. “Bright lights are never what they seem,” Yates warns. “When everything is out of your control / A lesson learned in letting go.” Turnstile are reaching toward their own understanding of surrender.
Unsurprisingly, Never Enough has stirred debate. Genre purists spiral over whether Turnstile still qualifies as hardcore—and if not, where to place them. Some question why this album doesn’t feel as groundbreaking as Glow On, despite sharing textures and themes with its predecessor. Meanwhile, others have elevated the band to modern-day Fugazi status—and just the other day, Never Enough debuted at #9 on the Billboard charts. It’s undeniably a vital piece of work that challenges listeners to consider not only why Glow On connected so immediately, but also what we really value in a band like Turnstile. All the chatter proves something: Never Enough touches a nerve. No matter the budget, acclaim, or ambition, it can always feel like it’s never enough.
I struggled writing this review, trying to cut through the hype without becoming cynical. But maybe that's what Never Enough does, too—it frustrates easy conclusions. And in a time where we expect every album to immediately define itself, to offer instant gratification or instant legacy, Never Enough asks something different: to wait, to feel uneasy, and to listen more than once. Maybe that’s not always satisfying. But it might just be more honest.
