“I was like, ‘I’m standing in the middle of these young school children destroying my guitar – for this?!’” With a parts-caster his dad found on the street, and a TikTok-inspired rhythm guitar style, hardcore phenoms Hammok are reinventing the genre

Tobias Osland of Hammok.

Tobias Osland is the wildly inspiring guitarist and songwriter behind one of the most essential bands in hardcore right now, the Norwegian trio Hammok. He started in a place familiar to most players: banging out single-string renditions of Smoke On The Water and Seven Nation Army. The crucial difference is that he didn’t stay there.

His playing on the band’s latest effort, When Does This Place Become Our Scene, is an enthralling, kaleidoscopic blend of everything from the deeply industrial to colossal bending of metal’s finest dark-arts noise-smiths like Chelsea Wolfe, right through to math-rock rhythms and the manic melodicism of Refused. He knows both how to let it breathe and to leave you breathless.