Hailing from Chicago, Illinois, Constant Pain released their debut EP, “poisoned to my rotten core” on September 5th, 2025, and since the day they burst onto the scene with an onslaught of rage-fueled bangers, it seems like they’ve been receiving nothing but love. The EP is blunt and in your face with lyrics describing what it’s been like for vocalist Nick Toppel to actually be living with constant physical pain.
Stitched: Where were you at both physically and mentally at the time of writing?
Nick: So, I started writing the songs in the summer of 2024. I’d been diagnosed with Crohn’s disease back in February of 2023. There were a lot of ups and downs during that time period. The first four songs I demoed were “Intro”, “Dig Deep”, “Agony Grows”, and “Internal Rot” and I was not in the best physical and mental state when writing that first batch. To quote “Dig Deep”, I say in the bridge “…another day under the knife…”, because that’s just me, and I was accepting that this was just going to be my life forever. In 2023 alone, I had a colonoscopy, an endoscopy, a bronchoscopy, and I almost had to get a biopsy on my lung. So all of the lyrics spawned from that – just another thing, another procedure, surgery – and that continues to this day. I used Constant Pain as an outlet to talk about the experiences I was having, and used writing to put what I was going through at the time on paper.
Stitched: In your lyrics, you talk a lot about the isolation you felt while navigating the physical aspects of your health. Seeing the response to the EP and the crowd’s responses at shows, do you still feel that sense of isolation now that you’ve put all of it out there?
Nick: It feels cathartic because once it’s out there, it’s not really mine anymore. As a listener, you don’t need to know what I’m going through to understand and resonate with these songs. I just try to write from an honest place that explains what I feel and what I felt and what I was going through. So I definitely do not feel isolated now, putting these songs out there and seeing how they live in the setting of a show is so much different than having them saved on my phone for two years and being the only one that’s really heard them.
Stitched: Well that being said, did you have any expectations when you did finally release “poisoned…”? How do you feel the response has been in general?
Nick: I had zero expectations and quite honestly, I didn’t even see it turning into what it’s become now. This has been for me first and foremost. I didn’t have any buildup prior to releasing it, we hadn’t even played a show yet. I just dropped it because I wanted to and if any of my friends found it cool, that’s really all I wanted. I’m very happy to do it in the capacity that we have. I thought maybe if we played 2-3 shows here and there, that’d be cool, but we’ve hit ten shows this year already which was the only goal I had set for myself in 2025. I’m just riding the wave right now.
Stitched: I love how natural the growth has been. Constant Pain released the followup EP, “broken, bruised, forgotten, sore” on June 10th of this year. Were any of these new songs leftovers from “poisoned…”? And if not, was the writing process any different for you?
N: Yes and no. I went to my friends at Buddy Boy Recording in Sun Prairie, WI to record all of the songs, so they were all written and recorded instrumentally in June of 2025. I had recorded all ten songs knowing I was going to split them up to release five in the fall and release the last five whenever I felt they were ready. It’s a brand new project and I didn’t want to drop all ten songs and overwhelm people. So last year I had a whole new set of health issues, and not to be hyperbolic, but it was probably one of the worst periods of health that I’ve had. I recorded the first EP with a kidney stone and had been in the hospital prior to recording, all during an active Crohn’s flareup. It was physically taxing. So lyrically, all of the content on the second EP is coming straight from that experience.
Stitched: Did you feel any pressure releasing the “broken…”, given how positive the response has been for the first EP?
Nick: No, I wouldn’t say so. My main goal is to just write songs I’m proud of and to just have fun playing with my friends. I don’t ever feel like there’s a pressure to live up to anything I’ve done previously. I don’t want to say it’s nonchalant, but I put the same effort as I did into releasing the first one. This has always been the process; write something I’m proud of, have fun with my friends, play shows.
Stitched: You’ve been involved intermittently in the music scene over the last decade. How has your approach and process changed over that time?
Nick: I started my first band at fifteen and I sincerely hope that sixteen years later, my process has changed. I think I have the same spirit behind it all, which has always been to have fun with my friends and make music that we all like, but I think the process itself has become more refined. We were way more whimsical back then when it came to writing and releasing. Approaching it now, I think I can just focus more on what actually matters to me versus the superficial things. I like to think we grew up and learned to only do what we find fun. You have a much different perspective in your youth, and that refinement and learning to separate what’s arbitrary from what’s actually valuable just comes with time. No one’s out here making millions playing hardcore music. If that’s the goal, you’re in the wrong business. However, if you’re looking to be rich in experience and community, this is definitely the place you want to be. Cultivating the kind of environment where you can have fun with your friends and welcoming other people and building that type of community is what I find most important at the end of the day.
Stitched: That being said, shout-out some bands, venues, and other artists and individuals in the scene that you feel are helping build that type of community.
Nick: Hell yeah, I’ve got a list.
Bands and artists; Alex Okami, Sick Joke, Practically Ill, Crashout, Augment, Sentenced 2 Life, Dissipator, Payasa, xACHEx, Mictlan
Photographers; @JKbeerphoto, @shotsbysamurai, @lalla.mp3, @echoes.in.gray, @dustyyyy / @fireside.fever.dream, @bbriseiidaa
Venues; Casa Cafe, Prison City Vintage, Glueman Vintage, Fargo, Rip Chicago, 2 Step Zine, Guillotine Entertainment
Stitched: As always, the message is always to build and support your community wherever you can, which has always been the ethos behind hardcore and the reason for this genre’s existence. And of course, check out Constant Pain wherever you get your music.
Photo by Jake Beer
