New Music Report – October 15, 2021
Now we’re getting into the thick of new release season and man, do we have some heaters this week. I’ve mostly been looking ahead to next week when the new Every Time I Die album comes out, but man, I’ve been so caught up on some of the releases from this week, I’m having no problem waiting another week for that album. Knocked Loose especially, quite literally came out of nowhere and killed it this week. This has been a really exciting year for music, and even this late in the year it still feels like we’re just getting started.
Knocked Loose EP – Haha holy shit this thing bangs so hard. A couple weeks ago, Knocked Loose started hinting at something, I sort of just assumed it was a new single, which would have been fantastic, but man, they really came out swinging. They dropped an EP with a full video production to go along with it. And it sure is a monster. This is definitely one of the heaviest things I’ve heard all year, but it also marks a new high point for Knocked Loose. Before this, they were just a hard-hitting hardcore band with a unique vocalist, this album introduces a whole new degree of song writing complexity that we haven’t really seen from the band before. It almost reminds me a bit of pre-Jane Doe Converge with better production quality. I’ve been feeling for a while that this year’s best releases have all been EPs, and man, this gave some serious weight to that argument. I’ve legit had this on repeat since they dropped the video production, and every second has still hit super hard. Actually, not gonna lie, I kinda hate the ASMR whisper outro part, but that’s a personal thing, it’s flawless otherwise.
Vildjharta – First off, nobody ever though this album would actually exist, so that’s an accomplishment in itself. This Swedish progressive metal band have been promising a new album for about a decade now, and it just seemed like it was never actually going to happen, but here we are. And usually when an album has that much hype and takes that much time, it’s gonna flop. The old “Chinese Democracy” syndrome. But somehow this album managed to exceed expectations. It’s an incredible display of musicianship, song-writing ability, and a novel approach to what it truly means to be heavy. This is simultaneously a crushing, slow grind, and also a technical whirlwind. Honestly, I have no idea how this band manages to remember all their parts, or how they combine such disparate sounds into something so cohesive and mesmerizing. This band is honestly on a different tier than just about anybody else in the game and – likely because of their long absence – are criminally underrated. But if you want to hear what metal is really capable of, check this out.
Ice Nine Kills – Ok, I feel like I should talk about this one and I’m gonna be objective about it. So when I lived in Boston, these guys were not really anything more than a bigger local band that got some occasional Warped Tour runs and that really felt like the end of the road for them. But man, credit where credit is due, they’ve blown up and really polished their songwriting along the way. To be honest, this is what I like to call Hot Topic-core. If this were released in 2005, back when I had Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge, this album would probably quite literally change my life. But here in 2021, a horror movie-themed metalcore album feels a bit cheesy. And make no mistake, it’s cheesy as fuck. But they’re doing it very, very well, and if they keep this up, they have a really solid upward trajectory ahead of them. I didn’t think they’d actually be able to follow up their last album – which was also a horror movie themed metalcore album – it felt like a one and done thing, but they sure proved me wrong. I won’t really be listening to this album very much, but I absolutely understand the appeal, and I know the exact audience for this sort of thing, and they’re going to love this.
Singles/Albums – Volumes (Post Hardcore), Angelmaker (Deathcore), Whitechapel (Deathcore), Betraying the Martyrs (Metalcore), Wolves at the Gate (Post-Hardcore), Emma Ruth Rundle (Dark Folk), Impending Doom (Deathcore), Left to Suffer feat. Will Ramos (Deathcore), Upon A Burning Body (Metalcore)
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New Music Report – October 8, 2021
This might just be a bit of a cop out, I know there are a bunch of good albums coming out this week that I’m not covering with a full review, but it’s honestly mostly cause I just don’t have enough of an opinion on them to say much. I’ve always loved Atmosphere, but I’ve had trouble getting in to modern Atmosphere and mostly just fondly remember the God Loves Ugly days when I discovered them. The World is a Beautiful Place is a well done, beautiful album but I don’t have enough to compare it to in my personal collection. And Kowloon Walled City is really cool, out there, sludgy post rock and I enjoyed it but I know it’s a bit out there. All of these are definitely worth your time, but apparently not worth my time to really write something out about them haha.
Trivium – Trivium are one of those bands that never really stopped working when the rest of the entertainment industry shut down. They took to Twitch and social media with live streams, video games, and just about every sort of content you could imagine. Which is pretty forward-thinking stuff from a metalcore band that has effectively been around forever. And man, they sure were cool in the early-00’s. They combined that New Wave of American Heavy Metal sound with typical early-00’s metalcore (along with bands like Shadows Fall, etc.) and made something genuinely special. There was awhile there where it really felt like it didn’t age very well, and maybe it didn’t, but be it a resurgence or purely nostalgia, the sound has come around again. This new album is meant to be a concept album that leaves the interpretation up to the listener, and I guess that’s a cool idea, but it almost feels unnecessary. It’s just a solid metalcore album that will give you exactly what you expect from Trivium, and it’ll be a good, enjoyable listen. I’m not in love with it, but it was very well done, so I’d say it’s worth checking out.
Singles/Albums – The World is a Beautiful Place and I’m No Longer Afraid to Die (LP, Post-Rock/Emo), Atmosphere (LP, Hip Hop), Kowloon Walled City (LP, Post Rock), Veil of Maya (Metalcore), The Last Ten Seconds of Life (Hardcore), Maybeshewill (Post-Rock), Bullet for my Valentine (Metalcore), Monuments (Metalcore), SeeYouSpaceCowboy (Screamo)
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New Music Report – October 1, 2021
We’re really getting into album release season now and things are starting to heat up. There are tons of INCREDIBLE albums coming out during the remainder of this year, and this week is a perfect example of the strength and diversity of these releases. There’s so much going on here from nonsense mathcore to ex-Attack Attack fever dream post-hardcore, and some new Converge and Devil Wears Prada thrown in for good measure, and I love it so much. So, check out everything if you can, there’s sure to be something for everyone.
Frontierer – I’ve said this a few times over the years, probably cause I listen to a lot of mathcore, but I’ll say it even strong for this one: This album is pure chaos. Oh my god, absolutely nothing makes sense here, it’s just absolute nonsense from start to finish and I love every second of it. Mathcore has lots of weird little subsets, where sometimes it seems very calculated, and sometimes it’s absolute destruction, and this sort of resides somewhere in the middle. Where everything on this album feels incredibly deliberate, but deliberately created from a mind that makes absolutely no sense. All while avoiding the trap of being chaos just for the sake of chaos, which isn’t always an easy thing to do with this sound. They manage to make this crazy mess of dissonance intelligent and captivating, while still being difficult to pick out a groove. It’s a hell of an experience, and I highly recommend it to any fans of mathcore, djent, just about any sort of nonsense that people are calling music.
Dying Wish – What an incredible surprise this album was. Dying Wish has been causing some stirs in the scene for a bit now, including a recent stint on the road with some all-time favorites of mine, Silent Planet. But as is often the case, until you really have a full sample size of what to expect from a band that you can really only get from a debut full length. It made me really cool off on my Spiritbox hype, and subsequently made me turn up the Dying Wish hype considerably. This album is nothing short of fantastic. It’s incredibly gritty, screamo-y metalcore, jumping on the current wave of screamo-reemergence and capitalization on nostalgic sounds and styles from the early-00s. And I’m kinda blown away by that whole movement cause most of the time that sort of thing feels too forced, but so many of these bands, Dying Wish included, are doing it so, so well. It’s familiar, but still their own sound, and executed on such a level that you rarely see from debut albums except from truly special bands.
Wage War – To put it simply, the last Wage War album was terrible. It was really just basic, boring, pseudo-radio-friendly metalcore. It lacked focus, substance, and really the passion or their previous album. So, I didn’t really have high hopes for this new album, I was really expecting it to be more of the same, just another album where they phoned it in so they could get some plays on Sirius XM. The singles leading up to this album gave me a bit more hope, but I still wasn’t expecting a ton. And I will say, the results are much better than I was expecting. In fact, it might just be their best album yet. Still not groundbreaking, it’s still mostly generic metalcore, but still pretty solid generic metalcore. And for what it’s worth, being generic isn’t really the worst thing in the world, not every band is going to set out to redefine the genre, some are just out there to make a specific, existing style of music, and make it as good as they can. And that’s exactly what Wage War did here, and I’m into it.
Singles/Albums – Full of Hell (LP, Deathgrind), The Devil Wears Prada (Metalcore), Converge/Chelsea Wolfe/Stephen Brodsky (Sludge/Metal/Post-Metal), Shadow of Intent (Deathcore), Bilmuri (EP, Post-Hardcore), Explosions in the Sky (LP, Post-Rock/Soundtrack), Archspire (Progressive Metal), Mastodon (Metal), Trivium (Metal)
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New Music Report – September 24, 2021
There has been a ton of hype around a lot of the releases coming out this week, and for good reason, really. None of them were huge up on my list, but I really was looking forward to them for their own reasons. It’s also nice that there’s a lot of diversity in the releases for this week, it should have a little bit for everybody.
Sleep Token – Sleep Token is very, very difficult to explain. They’re kinda metal but not super heavy, they have a very strong and talented vocalist and one of the most entertaining drummers I’ve literally ever heard, and have moments of real heavy music, but it’s more a heaviness through intensity than what you would traditionally expect. They also have the whole “masked band” gimmick with their own personas and story and so on, more like Ghost than Slipknot, but I’ll let that part slide. The album itself is, as the music would suggest, filled with a kind of slow burning intensity. Now, I like slow burning intensity, but this might be even a little bit slow for me. It’s a good album, don’t get me wrong, but definitely a bit out there, and something you have to be in the right mood for. But holy fuck, that drummer is a god damn monster. I’ll listen to this album on repeat for the drums alone.
Signs of the Swarm – For a while there, I wasn’t too hot on deathcore, it all kinda sounded the same and it was really difficult to do something new and innovative. Thankfully, that is no longer the case with excellent bands like Lorna Shore, Shadow of Intent, Mental Cruelty, etc, really pushing the boundaries of what you can do with deathcore, but it’s still easy to get lost in the deathcore scene. It’s so easy to just do the exact same thing as everybody else, and do it well enough to fit in but not stand out, but Signs of the Swarm are doing a damn good job at making sure they aren’t one of those bands. I didn’t care TOO much about this album on the build up to its release since it was, as noted, just yet another deathcore album, but upon first listen it was very clear that I did not give these guys enough credit. This is a hell of an album. It’s not going to reinvent the genre, and it’s not going to rise to the top far enough for me to mention them in the same breath as the bands listed above, but it certainly stands out enough on its own to warrant a listen.
Singles/Albums – Underoath (Metalcore), SeeYouSpaceCowboy (Screamo), Whitechapel (Metalcore), Fit for an Autopsy (Deathcore), 156/Silence (Metalcore), Attack Attack (Crabcore), We Butter the Bread with Butter (Weird German Electronicore), Rivers of Nihil (LP, Death Metal)
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New Music Report – September 17, 2021
Man, this week is HUGE. I can’t even begin to have enough time to cover all of them, but I’m making sure I at least cover some of the big ones. And by big, I mean two of these albums are ones I’ve been looking forward to for over a year now, and I’m fairly certain I’m not the only one. Spiritbox and Eidola have both been teasing these forever and I’m SO stoked to finally get to sit down and listen to them. There are tons of honorable mentions in the album list like the new Thrice and Employed to Serve, and some HUGE new singles from Silent Planet and ETID, so definitely take the time to check those out too.
Eidola – I absolutely adore this band. I’ve been saying for years that these guys are the best thing to come out of the swancore group by such a large margin, it isn’t even close. And this new album is just more evidence as to why. They avoid being a cookie-cutter of other progressive post-hardcore bands out there and maintain their own identity while still falling very firmly within familiar territory. Andrew Wells, singer, songwriter, and touring guitarist for Dance Gavin Dance is the mastermind behind this project and now, with the addition of guitar genius Sergio Medina, they’ve managed to step up their game once again. I’m not sure I’m in love with this album quite as much as their last one, but that sense of familiarity can’t be replicated immediately. What I do know, is this album is good enough to have the lasting power in my song rotation to know that one day it will be just as important to me, and that’s not an easy feat these days.
Spiritbox – This was easily one of the most hyped metal releases coming out this year and I’ll have to admit, I had some preconceived notions about it. About this time last year, I had “Holy Roller” on repeat and I thought this band would be huge, but as more and more singles rolled out I started to cool on them a bit. I don’t know why, it was still good, it just didn’t quite have the same impact. I was fully prepared to be underwhelmed by this album. But it turns out I was just looking at it the wrong way. Spiritbox are incredibly talented musicians and songwriters, and they’ve basically just fast-tracked their career to late-stage-Architects style metal. It’s a lot more accessible and “radio-friendly” than most metal, but still very technical and hits very hard. I think this will be an incredibly successful project for them and I certainly hope so because they deserve it. Not everything has to be crushingly heavy or djenty to be good, this album is exactly what it needs to be.
Mono – This is one of my sleeper hits of the year. I know a lot of you read this for my metal and hardcore recommendations and most of you aren’t as familiar with the post-rock bands that I follow but trust me when I say that this is one of the absolute best of the best. Mono, from Japan, have been some of the most emotional, powerful, and innovative post-rock bands out there for more than a decade now, so a new album from them is absolutely something to celebrate. They claimed that this album would have more electronic influences than other albums, which I guess I kind of see? I think it’s more in the atmospherics but regardless, it adds a ton of depth a complexity to an already strong album. This is one of those bands that you already know is going to put out something remarkable, but this album is just next level, even for them.
Singles/Albums – Silent Planet (Metalcore), Every Time I Die (Metalcore), Employed to Serve (Hardcore/Metalcore), Thrice (LP, Alt Rock), The Plot in You (LP, Post-Hardcore), Carcass (LP, Metal), Vulvodynia (LP, Slam-Death), Attack Attack (Crabcore), Sleep Token (Metalcore-ish), Comeback Kid (Hardcore/Metalcore), Wage War (Metalcore), Dying Wish (Metalcore)
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