Point Of No Return

From São Paulo, the largest metro area in the southern hemisphere, hails POINT OF NO RETURN. Founded in 1996, this three-singer Brazilian band has long carried the vegan, straight-edge banner in the tropics, singing about political issues and playing a metallic, mosh-infused brand of hardcore. After releasing two albums, one EP, and extensively touring South America and Europe in the early 2000s, the band went on hiatus in 2006. At the point the band stopped playing, they had written nine new songs, which they planned to eventually record and release as a third album. Slowly, they began to progress toward finishing and recording the new songs: instruments were recorded in Brazil in 2017, lyrics were written between 2019 and 2024, and vocals were recorded between 2023 and 2024. The result is POINT OF NO RETURN’s new album, The Language Of Refusal, whose title refers to hardcore punk as a transnational community, a form of art, and a means of expression for those discontent with the way things are. With songs addressing some of the most pressing issues today, such as deforestation and labor exploitation in the Amazon rainforest, the inequities of global warming, the rise of global conservative populism, and the challenges of organizing dissenting political movements, the album delivers these topics in a mix of late-’90s mosh core, SLAYER-esque riffs, gang vocals, and hints of NAPALM DEATH.