New Music Report – November 5, 2021
Music release season continues with some absolute heaters, some of the brightest bands in the game, both young and old, are cranking out some excellent new music this year. It feels like a giant build up that’s still carrying over from last year, but I’ll absolutely take it.
SeeYouSpaceCowboy – These guys are the hottest new band in the scene, bar none, and they’re just going to keep on their stratospheric rise in popularity and I’m pretty sure there isn’t a damn thing out there that can stop them. And the cool thing is, they aren’t REALLY doing anything new. In fact, it’s pretty old. A whole 15-20 years later, they’ve managed to re-invent the old school screamo/emocore (bet you haven’t heard that word in a while) sound into something that sounds incredibly fresh. As much as I love all those old bands that laid the foundation for this sound, hell, those bands were the soundtrack to my high school years, but SYSC might actually be the best ones to ever do it. They’ll never have that same nostalgia factor, but there’s still something about the sound in general that has this inherent nostalgia. It’s almost like I’ve heard this before, and yet it’s brand new. These guys are simultaneously stuck in the past and absolutely blazing a trail to the future and I’m loving being able to watch it. This new album is just another definitive step forward for what is sure to be an incredibly bright career.
Emma Ruth Rundle – Emma Ruth Rundle has been one of my favorite artists for a long time. For the longest time she got caught up in Chelsea Wolfe’s wave to success, which is sort of a generalization cause they really sound nothing alike. ERR has a distinctly dark and bleak sound that sits bare against the musical arrangement. Either with her band, or with her earlier solo work it all felt incredibly personal and direct. It was raw, dark, and absolutely beautiful. Though her last album delved a bit more into bringing in support from her backing band, making it feel a bit more complete yet more impersonal, which is interesting because her last album was some of her best work and the instrumentation provided a lot of strength to the arrangement. This new album, however, strips things down with dark, sparse, yet incredibly powerful instrumentation. Her vocals and lyrics have always been such a centerpiece, allowing this album to meander along that theme accentuated by finely populated melodies and plucking piano adds more depth and intensity to her already incredibly intense work. This somehow feels even more personal and it’s just gorgeous, I love it.
Singles/Albums – Greyhaven (Southern Metalcore), Portrayal of Guilt (LP, Hardcore), Like Moths to Flames (LP, Post-Hardcore/Metalcore), Slipknot (Metal), Senses Fail (Post-Hardcore), Blood Moon (Converge & Chelsea Wolfe, Sludge/Metal/Post-Metal), Hammock (LP, Ambient)