New Music Report – August 13, 2021

I know I’ve been kinda behind on these recently and this is a stacked week with a lot of music to cover at once, but honestly, I’m just so damn excited about every one of these releases, I can’t wait to talk about them. You know a week is packed when legendary bands like Sepultura and Quicksand are stuck in the honorable mention section. Speaking of, the Mouthbreather (mathcore) album I was talking about a few months ago finally dropped today but I didn’t have space to cover it, so please check that out too. Also, The Killers have a new album out and they did a song with Phoebe Bridgers? Ok, so I’m getting carried away already, I’m not actually going to waste any more time, I’m just gonna get straight into it.

Lorna Shore – We all remember “To the Hellfire”, I’ve never actually seen a deathcore song gain so much universal hype, so quickly. And honestly, it was completely deserved. Aside from being unspeakably heavy, it was incredibly complex, well written, technical, and just a very well-done song by a band that is incredibly talented but has seen its fair share of setbacks. It was an amazing return to form, and I’ve been so excited for this EP ever since. In fact, I can’t remember the last time I stayed up late on a Thursday night to listen to an album right as it dropped. I know it’s only three songs long, but holy shit, what a fucking album. I was expecting “To the Hellfire” to be the centerpiece and the rest to just sort of be filler to hype up the main single, but every second of this EP is just incredible. Again, it’s more than just heavy, it’s got captivating composition, novel blends of synths and choirs that are the most well-done example I’ve heard in blackened deathcore, ripping guitar solos, and Will Ramos vocal work is second to none. They hit it out of the park with this EP and I can’t wait for a full length.

Captives – I’ve been championing this band for years now. I came across the first EP they put out in 2019 as a small, unknown British band with next to zero fanbase in the United States. I can’t remember the last time I heard a band go from 0 to 100 so quickly and break out onto the scene, completely unknown, with such an incredibly well written debut album. Since then, I’ve been watching these guys build themselves up through the UK and Europe waiting for their shot in the States. But after they signed with Sharptone, I got to see them garner the attention they deserve nearly overnight with more well written post-hardcore in an era where, unless you’re associated with Dance Gavin Dance, it’s getting hard to break through in the genre. And I couldn’t be happier for these guys, not only because they’re getting the chance they deserve, but they’re getting the resources to put out more incredible music and get it in front of more people that are sure to love it. If you’re a fan of the cleaner and more technical post-hardcore like early Hands Like Houses, this is the band for you, please check out this album.

If I Die First – This is one of my favorite new bands that I’ve discovered this year, and in the oddest way, the best thing about them is that they don’t sound new at all. This is the new-ish project from Travis Richter and Derek Bloom of From First to Last, with a few younger musicians like Lil Lotus. And the result is a perfect blend of early-00s era screamo/emocore/post-hardcore, combined with a fresh take on what the genre is capable of with help from the younger generation. The result is honestly fucking brilliant. I love this band so much. I’ve never had something bring me squarely back to my high school days while still managing to sound new and fresh. This isn’t purely a nostalgia trip, and that’s a very important point here. When you’re very clearly trying to emulate or reimagine a specific sound, it’s easy to get labeled as a novelty act, trying to recapture a moment long past. But that isn’t the case here at all, and I think that has a lot to do with the blend of fresh new voices combined with some of the experts that shaped the genre years ago, and they execute it perfectly.

Slaughter to Prevail – Honestly, the fact the deathcore is becoming a semi-mainstream thing now is so weird to me. It’s even weirder that this movement is, at least in part, lead by a Russian deathcore band who are leading the charge through YouTube? I don’t know, 2021 is weird. I’m glad such extreme genres are starting to get some more recognition though. And honestly, this isn’t strictly deathcore, it’s more like… nu-deathcore? Which is a new word, I’m pretty sure. I can’t say I enjoy these guys as much as Lorna Shore or some of the other incredible deathcore bands out there like Shadow of Intent and so on, but they are crushingly heavy, I’ll give them that. I know there’s a lot of hype behind these guys, and I can’t really tell if that’s the social media hypetrain making them too gimmicky or if they are genuinely a really good band. But I do know that I enjoyed this album, even if it’s only in a fairly superficial way, I know there isn’t a lot of depth or even really creativity going on here, but sometimes you just want meathead breakdowns and chugging caveman riffs, and that’s exactly what you get with Slaughter to Prevail.

Fawn Limbs – The rest of these bands have honestly been pretty easy to describe. I know exactly what they are, I know what they sound like, and what they’re trying to do. This one, however, is a complete mindfuck. And that’s precisely why I love it. This album is so, so strange, it’s this weird mix of super chaotic mathcore and like, experimental ambient, post metal, and some sludge. It’s really cool, but also really hard to picture. Those two sides are basically polar opposites on the metal spectrum and it’s kind of hard to imagine how the two could go together, but it’s the diversity that makes it so special. It’s supposed to be jarring, it’s supposed to be challenging, and it is. It’s kind of perfect. Like, last night I went out for dinner and had watermelon wrapped in some salted, cured ham. That sounds like a challenging taste, right? Such polarizing taste profiles competing for the same bite. But the breadth of the taste spectrum that I was experiencing is what made it so special. And that’s kind of exactly what’s going on here, this is watermelon wrapped in ham. If that makes sense.

Singles/Albums – Unreqvited (LP, Blackgaze), Mouthbreather (LP, Mathcore), Sepultura (LP, GENRE), Quicksand (LP, Post-Hardcore), Spiritbreaker (LP, Metalcore), Ice Nine Kills (Hot-Topic-Core), The Zenith Passage (Tech Death, feat. Members of The Faceless), Earth Groans (Metalcore), Hawthorne Heights (Post-Hardcore), Eidola (Post-Hardcore), Trivium (Metalcore), Crown the Empire (Metalcore, feat. Courtney LaPlante), War of Ages (Metalcore), The Killers (LP, Rock), Adventure Club feat. Rory from Dayseeker (EDM)