New Music Report – August 27, 2021
We’re getting into the good part of the year now. I know new releases tend to come in waves, but late-summer all through fall is always a very busy time for new music and I have to say, I’m super stoked about some of the stuff on the horizon. Including a few of this week’s releases. Phinehas and Turnstile are both two bands absolutely at the top of their game and keeping the heavy music scene really interesting and fun. I’m not loving everything I talk about this week, but again, that’s all just personal opinion, it’s all certainly worth checking out.
Phinehas – There has been a lot of really good metalcore coming out over the past few years, and I have to say it’s easy to take it all for granted. The genre is pushing itself to new heights with bands raising the bar seemingly week by week. But on the other hand, I suppose it’s probably kind of easy to desensitized by all this good music. I know I’ve written off perfectly good albums because they were like 8/10 but the standard these days is at least a 9/10 or better. It’s kind of wild, actually. That said, Phinehas is at least a 9/10, good god, what a record. It’s got the technicality of the last Invent, Animate record, the vocal hooks of the last Polaris album, and the breakdowns of the last ABR album. But it still sounds like its own unique piece of music, which I think is the real challenge here. They did a phenomenal job standing out in what is, frankly, a very crowded room.
Turnstile – Turnstile is such a cool band. First off, they’re Baltimore locals, so they already get bonus points for that. But they’re also going through a similar arc that Knocked Loose went through a few years ago, where they’re championing this somewhat new hybrid sound of old school heavy genres that has absolutely no business gaining any sort of mainstream success on a larger scale, but here we are. Turnstile have managed to make (intentionally) poorly recorded, upbeat 90’s New York hardcore into something undeniably infectious and honestly just so much fun. The hype for them, while somewhat surprising, is 100% deserved. I know this was a fairly big week for releases, but now that some time has passed, the only album I still see continually mentioned as something people have on repeat is one, and I have to say, I completely understand. It’s not every day that hardcore can be this fun, but Turnstile absolutely nailed it.
Jinjer – Ok, this is gonna be a controversial one and some of you all aren’t gonna like this but that’s ok. I understand what Jinjer is trying to do and I’m glad they’re getting so much attention for it. They’re all incredibly talented musicians, and Tatiana an incredible voice. But man, these guys aren’t for me. It’s hard to explain, it all feels a little too much like a simulation of what metal is supposed to look and sound like; it feels a little generic and two-dimensional. It also feels a little bit dated, if this came out in like 2004 it would be insane, but now it just feels like we can do more with this sound. I don’t know, like I said, I know this isn’t going to be a popular opinion, but this one didn’t do it for me. I’m sure a lot of people will like this one, so as always, I encourage people to listen for themselves and form their own opinion, that’s why I’m still taking the time to write about it, but I’m not super into this one.
Singles/Albums – The Bronx (LP, Punk), Wage War (Metalcore), Rebreather & Frayle (Post-Metal/Doom), Shadow of Intent (Lamb of God cover, Deathcore), Memphis May Fire (Metalcore)
New Music Report – August 20, 2021
This has been another absolutely stacked week, holy shit. New albums aside, new singles from ETID, Silent Planet, Phinehas, Spiritbox, Volumes, and Rolo Tomassi is HUGE, like, how does that all even happen in the same week? And all at the same time as new BTBAM and WITTR. I’m not gonna lie, most of the summer was pretty slow for new music but man, these past few weeks have been absolutely insane. Hopefully this keeps up through the end of the year, but with all these new announcements for fall releases starting to roll out, it seems like that’s going to be the case.
Between the Buried and Me – This album is fucking insane. Like, I know as a musician of over two decades I could literally never aspire to be good enough to play in BTBAM, that’s fine, I’ve made friends with that fact, but just the memory these guys must have to remember these huge, sprawling, complex songs is absolutely beyond me. I can’t remember the last time I felt dumber listening to an album. But man, was it worth it. For what it’s worth, I’ve kinda fallen off BTBAM in the past few years, they’re an incredible band, of course, but they got a little too proggy for me. I was hopefully that Colors 2 – billed as the spiritual successor to their absolute ripper of an album, Colors – would bring back some of their old metal flair, and boy, did it. I honestly can’t say enough good things about this album. It’s got just incredible musicianship, song writing, diversity, complexity… I could go on. This is a full-on masterclass not only in progressive metal, but in what it means to be a musician playing at the absolute top of your game. Listen to this album, please.
Wolves in the Throne Room – This is a completely different side of the coin. Not to say WITTR aren’t talented musicians, but this is all about the atmosphere and the feel of the song. And they manage to create some of the bleakest, darkest soundscapes I’ve heard in ages, and yet they do so beautifully. These guys have been setting the scene for post-black metal for years now. People have been crediting Deafheaven for setting the genre on fire, but WITTR have really helped propel it forward with wonderfully crafted and deeply thoughtful albums. This is one of those albums that really takes a while to digest, when you listen to it, it’s just so easy to get lost in it, only to surface about 45 minutes later with the album starting over again. You felt the whole thing, but it was hard to really catch all the details. As such, I’m still digesting this one. But on first impression, I’m not entirely sure it’s quite as good as their last album though very close. But that was a masterpiece, so it’s almost an unfair benchmark. I’m still incredibly fond of this album and look forward to spending a lot of time with it.
Singles/Albums – Every Time I Die (GOAT Metalcore), Silent Planet (Also GOAT Metalcore), Rolo Tomassi (Progressive Metalcore), Deafheaven (LP, Shoegaze), The Plot in You (Post-Hardcore), Volumes (Djent), Everyone Dies in Utah (Metalcore), Spiritbox (Metalcore), Turnstile (Hardcore), Vildhjarta (Progressive Metal), Phinehas (Metalcore), Senses Fail (feat. Spencer from Ice Nine Kills, Post-Hardcore), Obscura (Death Metal)
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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)
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New Music Report – August 6, 2021
Oh man, it took me forever to track down all the singles for this week. There are even a few that I had to omit from this list in the interest of space. But man, what a busy week, it’s really cool to see so many great singles coming out, it speaks volumes for the albums that are going to be coming from these bands later this year. I think the last part of this year is going to be absolutely packed with incredible releases, so definitely keep an eye on these lists, and in the meantime, definitely check these singles out.
Ov Sulfur – This album is gnarly. It’s kind of a mashup of several different genres at once, a bit of deathcore, a bit of old school metalcore, a bit of thrash, and a bit of straight up hardcore, and the result is honestly really fucking cool. Also, pretty damn heavy too. I suppose you’d expect this sort of thing though, cause Ov Sulfur is the new project of former Suffokate vocalist, Ricky Hoover. It’s just an EP so it’s hard to get too much of an idea of what a complete full length album would sound like, but it definitely feels like they’re cramming a ton of content into an EP; it feels longer than it is. Of course, the downside to this is that, at times, it feels a bit busy, like there’s a little TOO much going on, too many different sounds trying to compete for a limited amount of time and space. But that’s also sort of something that’s just endemic to extreme metal in itself, so it’s hard to knock it for that. When it comes down to it, when we’re looking at a debut album for a band, even one with such an acclaimed vocalist, we’re dealing with something seriously impressive here; this album absolutely rips.
Lingua Ignota – It’s so hard to explain Lingua Ignota, it’s a mix of folk, neo-classical, and just some crazy, heavy, emotional themes and sounds. The most apt word to describe this, is ‘intense’. Everything else stems from that. This is a crazy, dark folk masterpiece, composed with traditional Appalachian folk instruments, and featuring members of deathgrind band, Full of Hell and avant garde noise metal band, The Body. I mean, how fucking cool is that? It blends these folk roots and crazy metal musicians with operatic and classical melodies and the resulting album is just incredibly powerful. It’s such a truly unique experience that it’s really hard to convey what this album feels like, so unique in fact that it doesn’t even feel anything like her last album, but man, is it worth experiencing. This sort of thing isn’t going to be for everybody, it’s deeply experimental and challenging, but worthwhile for anybody willing to give it a shot to experience something straneg yet incredibly profound.
Singles/Albums – Brand of Sacrifice (Deathcore), Frontierer (Mathcore), Full of Hell (Deathgrind) Archspire (Tech Death), Dying Wish (Metalcore), Wolves in the Throne Room (Post-Black Metal), Underoath (Metalcore), Purity Ring (SynthPop), The World is a Beautiful Place (Post Rock/Emo), Deafheaven (Shoegaze), Sleep Token (Post-Hardcore), Sentinels (Metalcore), Spiritbreaker (Metalcore), Waking the Cadaver (Death Metal), Memorist (Post-Hardcore), Wage War (Metalcore), Don Bronco (Post-Hardcore/Alt Rock)
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New Music Report – July 30, 2021
This week here was a pretty light week, as it turns out. Like I said last time, things are really looking to pick up around mid-August, which means we’re still getting hit with a ton of new singles from upcoming releases that are all really, really good. But conversely, we’re left with a kind of light week for full releases. But it’s a big one for old school easycore fans, with Chunk! No, Captain Chunk’s first album release in six years, so even on the light weeks, there’s something to look forward to.
Chunk! No, Captain Chunk! – Time is weird, I’ve seen so many waves and iterations of pop punk, I’m not even really sure what it is anymore. It existed for a while and it was a bit of a catch all term, then it fell out of fashion, then it had a big resurgence in the early 2010s with bands like The Wonder Years and The Story So Far, and now Machine Gun Kelly makes pop punk? And it’s kinda weird to figure out where easycore fits in there because it was always kind of part of the pop punk scene but it also sort of operated autonomously. And thankfully, Chunk! No, Captain Chunk is doing just that, cause this all feels very familiar and I’m really into it. I’ll be honest, I avoided these guys for years cause I think their name is really stupid, but now I’m glad I gave them a shot. There’s a lot of complexity and melody to this album, in a way that’s missing from a lot of easycore albums, but it still maintains that quasi-pop punk bounce that’s just a ton of fun. There’s a lot to like about this album and I’d recommend anyone, new fan or old, check this out. I still hate their name though,
Singles/Albums – King Woman (LP, Doom Metal), Jinjer (Metalcore), Phinehas (Metalcore), Rivers of Nihil (Death Metal), Shadow of Intent (Deathcore), Thrice (Rock), The Plot in You (Post-Hardcore), Turnstile (Hardcore Punk), Telle (Pop, Feat. Mindy White of Lydia), We Butter the Bread with Butter (Post-Hardcore/Electronicore), The Voynich Code (Prog Metalcore), Employed to Serve (Metalcore), The Bronx (Punk)
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New Music Report – July 23, 2021
I know I’ve been kind of off schedule with my new music posts lately but I’m kinda digging this posting two updates once every two weeks thing. At least for now, mid-summer is always a kind of slow time for album releases, so it just kinda makes sense to do it this way. At least for the next few weeks, I’m tracking 8 releases for August 13th, so I’ll probably break things out into individual weeks again then. Anyway, a couple really interesting releases this week that I’d highly recommend checking out, stay tuned for more soon.
Sleeper Waker – This band is sick, they fit in very well with the new wave of metalcore bands with some more technical, almost nu-metal-y elements like Silent Planet, Northlane, etc. Of course, in that same vein, that means it does make it a little harder for them to stand out amongst contemporaries that are frankly incredible. Which makes my summary of this album a little weird. It’s incredible, it hits so hard, the concept is pretty cool, and the musicianship is unreal. I love this album. But in a sea of other new technical metalcore bands (some of them are using the label post-metalcore, but I’m not ready for that one just yet) it almost becomes forgettable simply because of the incredible level of musicianship and mastery of the genre. It’s so good, but it draws within the lines almost a little too well in a way that I know Silent Planet and others won’t. So, I’ll spin this album until the new SP album drops and be perfectly happy about it.
Capstan – This album is so weird, it’s trying to be SO many different things at once, and I can’t necessarily say it’s bad at it, but it’s a lot to process. One second, it’s like, djent, another its pop punk, another it’s a weird electronicore breakdown. Very strange. But I kinda dig it. I guess the average here would put it somewhere within post hardcore. Now, this isn’t like one of those albums that’s just chock full of several very diverse and eclectic sounds, it’s more like a compilation of several distinct genres, but somehow it never really sounds messy. Some of the transitions can be a bit jarring, but for the most part they accomplish the blend remarkably well. I’m actually really shocked at how good this album is cause on paper it should be pure chaos. But the guitar work is phenomenal, the vocal work is top notch, and the pop hooks interspersed among metalcore chugging is incredibly well written. Again, no idea how this makes sense, but this really is a remarkable album.
Singles/Albums – Coheed & Cambria (Prog Rock), Quicksand (Post-Hardcore), Between the Buried & Me (Progressive Metal), Spirit Breaker (Metalcore), Hawthrone Heights (Post-Hardcore feat. Brendan from Counterparts), Carnifex (Deathcore), Bullet for my Valentine (Metalcore), Venues (Metalcore), Attila (LP, Metalcore, this isn’t going on my playlist, sorry), Descendents (LP, Punk)
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