There are bands you discover at exactly the right time, and then there are bands you discover twenty years too late and immediately wonder where the hell you were when they were making this much noise. For me, Prisoner 13 falls squarely into the second category.
I came across Prisoner 13 while working my way through the massive Big Heavy World CD collection, and this one caught my attention quickly. Here was a Vermont band from the early 2000s delivering heavy riffs, hardcore aggression, metal influence, and the kind of raw intensity that immediately speaks my language. The deeper I went, the more my reaction became pretty simple: I really wish I had known about these guys years ago. This is very much up my alley. There is some serious grit here, and that is grit I can get behind.
Two Prisoner 13 releases from the Big Heavy World collection provide a good look into the band's recorded output: the six-track Giving In To Violence and the 2003 full-length Strength of One. Together, they paint the picture of a band operating at that particularly aggressive intersection of hardcore punk and metal that was flourishing around the Northeast during the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is not polished music designed to reach the widest possible audience. It is heavy music with sharp edges intact.
Giving In To Violence gets straight to the point. It's six tracks: "Combat Zone," "Bloodshed," "Left For Dead," "Predator," "Power Overwhelming," and "No Regrets" read almost like a mission statement before you ever hear a note. There is nothing subtle about those titles, and subtlety was hardly the currency of the heavy underground during this period. Bands were writing music meant to hit with physical force. One song on the EP is especially important when looking at Prisoner 13's place within Vermont music history: "No Regrets." Shop the two Prisoner 13 releases: Prisoner 13
The track also appears on Big Heavy World's 2001 compilation 242.01: The Bands of 242 Main, where Prisoner 13 joined 21 other bands associated with Burlington's legendary 242 Main. The compilation moved across punk, hardcore, metal, ska, industrial, and independent rock, capturing a broad cross-section of a Vermont underground that did not necessarily fit neatly into conventional commercial categories. For Prisoner 13, "No Regrets" placed the band alongside other musicians who were building that scene from the ground up. That connection to 242 Main is significant.
For generations of Vermont musicians and fans, 242 Main was more than another place to catch a show. It provided a music stage that often existed outside the commercial mainstream, particularly punk, hardcore, and other underground styles. The room became part of Burlington's musical identity because bands did not have to arrive with national recognition. They could be loud, young, independent, and still have somewhere to play. Prisoner 13 was part of that world.
Archived Big Heavy World material places the band on a June 2000 benefit show for 242 Main alongside Problem Box, Enemy, Disillusion, Downslide, Torsion, Evenmind, Overthrow, Sanity and Drowningman. That lineup is a snapshot of the environment Prisoner 13 inhabited: a network of heavy bands sharing stages, audiences and the energy surrounding Vermont's underground scene at the beginning of a new decade.
The trail continues into 2001. An archived tour itinerary for Massachusetts hardcore band 7th Rail Crew lists Prisoner 13 at Higher Ground in May of that year with 7th Rail Crew, Company Front, Problem Box, One Year Experiment and Downslide. Additional Big Heavy World material places Prisoner 13 alongside Torsion, Downslide, S.T.M.P. and Pleasant Tense.
By September 2002, surviving concert records show Prisoner 13 sharing a Higher Ground bill with Diecast, Cannae and Torsion. For anyone familiar with the heavier side of New England music from that period, a bill like that provides useful context. Prisoner 13 was not operating in some isolated corner of Vermont. The band was playing within a regional environment where hardcore and metal increasingly overlapped, producing music that could draw from both without worrying too much about where one genre ended and another began.
Then comes Strength of One.
Released in 2003 on Crooked Core Records, the full-length stretches Prisoner 13 across eleven tracks: "War Without Words," "Assault Cycle," "Natural Selection," "Hurry Up And Drown," "Bloodshed," "Living Victims," "Diseased," "One By One," "Human Shield," "Strength Of One," and "Reveal." An independent catalog identifies the release as CCR001, an intriguing catalog designation that raises additional questions about Crooked Core Records and its relationship to the band.
What stands out immediately when comparing the two releases is the return of "Bloodshed." The song appears on both Giving In To Violence and Strength of One, creating a direct connection between the earlier EP and the later full-length; rather than looking at the albums as two isolated entries, that overlap gives us at least a glimpse of a band carrying material forward while expanding into a substantially larger album.
One surviving concert archive categorizes the band as metallic hardcore, and as genre descriptions go, it is a useful starting point. Hardcore provides the urgency and aggression; metal brings weight, riffing, and a harder edge. For listeners whose tastes cross between hardcore punk, thrash, groove-heavy metal and the heavier strains of early-2000s underground music, Prisoner 13 occupies familiar territory.
Another tantalizing piece of the story exists, though it needs to remain properly qualified. A person posting online who identifies himself as Prisoner 13's former vocalist described the original idea behind the band as essentially bringing together the influence of Pantera and Sepultura. Because I have not independently confirmed the poster's identity, I would not present that statement as established band history. But as a description of what the music was trying to accomplish, it certainly provides an interesting avenue for further research.
Prisoner 13 existed during an interesting period for heavy music. The boundaries separating hardcore and metal had been eroding for years, and by the early 2000s, bands throughout the Northeast were freely borrowing from both traditions. Hardcore could get heavier. Metal bands could embrace hardcore's economy and directness. Shows could put punk-rooted bands next to groups with substantially more metal in their DNA, and audiences did not necessarily need a perfect genre classification before deciding whether something worked. Sometimes the only meaningful question was whether the music hit hard enough.
Prisoner 13 did.
That is ultimately what makes discovering this band now so satisfying for me. I can research the dates, follow the old concert listings, identify the venues, compare the tracklists, and trace the band's appearances through the Vermont scene, but none of that would matter very much if the music itself did not make me want to hear more.
As someone whose musical tastes have always crossed genres, I have never been particularly interested in respecting artificial boundaries between punk, hardcore, metal, alternative music, or anything else. If something has energy, authenticity,y and musicians playing like they actually mean it, I am usually willing to follow wherever it goes. Prisoner 13 checks those boxes. And perhaps that explains my frustration at finding them so late.
The early 2000s were not ancient history for me. I was listening to heavy music. I was buying records and CDs. I was following bands. I was immersed in music. Yet somehow Prisoner 13 passed completely outside my radar. Twenty-plus years later, a pair of CDs from the Big Heavy World collection finally corrected that oversight.
That is one of the things I enjoy most about digging into Vermont's music history for The Maple City Journal. Every week does not have to be about the newest single, the next show, ow or the artist everybody is already talking about. Vermont has decades of bands worth going back and discovering, including bands whose names may not be familiar to listeners entering the scene today.
Prisoner 13 deserves another listen.
There are still pieces of the band's story I would like to uncover. A complete and independently verified lineup would be valuable. So would the story behind Crooked Core Records and the CCR001 designation on Strength of One. There are undoubtedly people who saw Prisoner 13 at 242 Main or Higher Ground, shared a bill with them, bought one of these CDs directly from the band, or stood in front of a stage while these songs were being played at full volume. Those stories are still out there.
For now, we have two releases that say quite a bit on their own. Giving In To Violence gives us six tracks of early Prisoner 13, including "No Regrets," the song that connected the band to Big Heavy World's 242.01 compilation. Strength of One gives us the 2003 full-length, eleven tracks deep and carrying the band's metallic-hardcore attack into a larger statement (Both albums can be found here: Prisoner 13). The surviving show history puts Prisoner 13 at 242 Main, Higher Ground, and on bills extending beyond Vermont into the broader New England heavy-music community.
And then there is my highly technical assessment after spending time with all of this:
Where the hell was I?
Because Prisoner 13 is exactly the sort of band I would have wanted to catch in a small room, amps turned up, the crowd pushing against the stage. Maybe being more than twenty years late is better than never finding them at all.
This week's Vermont Artist Spotlight goes to Prisoner 13, a heavy piece of Vermont's early-2000s underground and a band I genuinely wish had crossed my path a whole lot sooner.
That is some grit I can get behind.
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