Monumental progress doesn’t occur overnight. Some of man kind’s most powerful wordsdon’t come from education or privilege, but erupt from the pain and roughness of the streets;they smolder through the cracks in the concrete until eventually grand truthsare revealed, andthe winds of change slowly emerge. It is with these notions in mind that old school HardcoreKingsDOWNSETbegan to surface in Los Angeles, California in the early 1980’s.The genesis ofDOWNSETitself was not one of entitlement or handouts, either. Originallyformed with a straight edge mentality under the name ofSOCIAL JUSTICE,the members ofDOWNSEThave been fighting against societal injustice for a long time. Founder andvocalistRey Oropezabegan using graffiti as its own language for change in about 1982. Thegroup eventually released demos and shifted fromSOCIAL JUSTICEtoDOWNSET.“Ithas multiple meanings,”explains guitarist and producerRogelio Lozano (CYPRESS HILL,POWERFLO).“Some people are set up in life, some are down with a set, but it also meansto start off underprivileged; to have a life full of disadvantages.”All of these notions andinspirations eventually procured a self-titled studio album that was released in 1994 viaMercury Records.A musical style that was distinctly hardcore combined withOropeza’sMC abilitiesallowedDOWNSETto stand out from other metal acts, while still being able to achieve avariety of tours with some of the most prominent bands of the time. After memberrearrangements, and the 1996 release of“Do We Speak A Dead Language,“the band wenton to join the original “TATTOO THE EARTH” tour in 2000 with the likes ofSLAYER,SEPULTURA, MUDVAYNEand more. This all coincided perfectly with the release of“Check Your People,“and once again the band was on the hustle.With more member changes and the release of“Universal“a few years later in 2004,followed up by self-released“One Blood“in 2014, the band continued on hiatus. Now sevenyears later in 2022,DOWNSEThave officially returned to the scene and have signed arecord deal with the world’s leading metal label: Nuclear Blast Records. The new year willhold colossal announcements as far as new music, touring, and more. The future of societyremains to be seen, but the future ofDOWNSEThas been carved in the stone of the streetsfor decades