Deadguy is still fertile ground to excavate for modern metalcore bands. Take one listen to Colonial Wound’s first release Untitled. The vocals are similar but are still modern, adding a much needed update to this style of the genre. Degradation only ups the ante, bringing in more of a noise rock influence, not too dissimilar to Exhalants or Unsane.
Pinpointing our modern hell in a few brief punk songs, Kneeling In Piss gives us more. Types of Cults is their fourth release and their third EP from a series of recordings made over the last year. Signature to the band’s sound is finding that right piece of music and playing it until it’s all used up, with a “concrete lack of skill.”
Crafted intermittently over the course of five years, Feedback & PB is a dense and complex work, flowing dizzyingly from hook to hook, interspersed with noise, found-recording style interludes, and madcap arpeggiating synths. The hooks may be sweet or sour, but they change fast and are always complex and vivid.
New Orleans art punks Special Interest dropped their second album The Passion Of at a time when many needed a soundtrack to their suddenly very dystopian lives. In June 2020, there was civil unrest peaking around the deaths of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor at the hands of police -- in the midst of a pandemic.
Fury, alienation and anxiety are key emotions in the punk and post-hardcore canon. For Tunic, those feelings are not just essential, they drive them. On Exhaling, they deliver a massive set of 23 songs injected with visceral themes. David Schellenberg roars and snarls lyrics of coping with stress and the vexed duality of oneself.
BIG|BRAVE didn’t set out to be one of the world’s most riveting experimental metal bands, but you wouldn’t know it by listening to them. Each release has absolutely radiated discomfort. Vital appears to push their approach to its limit, leaning into their well-oiled combination of sinewy vocals, slow rhythms, and twin-guitar sheets of sound.
Constellations is the sophomore album from Vermont quartet Clever Girls who combine dusty Americana influences with bursts of psychedelic noise mixed in. Their songs have a deep-rooted bounciness in them that combines with a spiky lyrical bent to produce ecstatic moments that have real emotional depth.
It’s not often a band gets harder and lower-fi with time--not without sounding contrived, anyway--but on their new LP II, Japanese post-punk band M.A.Z.E. tap into their hardcore influence with unqualified success. II is faster, furiouser, and more fun, filling in singer Eriko’s vocals with fuzz and throwing some real punch behind guitarist Tatsuya’s oscillating riffs and scorching chord swipes.
Through its twelve tracks and 39 minutes, ULTRAPOP offers nothing more than the absolute best. It’s a fantastic, futuristic, and forward-thinking emulsion of “what we know pop to be” and “what pop can be” from the heavy side of the aisle. It’s simultaneously grandiose, gruesome and glamorous while never evoking notions of elitism.
Carnage is contemplative. Lyrically it is the reflections of a prominent artist reacting to our suddenly changed lives. It soundtracks our failing world. Thoughts come and go and recurring themes build and connect from song to song. It would feel like a stream of consciousness record if it weren’t so refined.
Hanson sets his sights towards a sound inspired by locales both arid and vast. Songs move at a patient pace, often glacial and restrained, though always with the feeling that there’s always something up his sleeve. These are songs that evoke desolate environs; high deserts, each song a rest-stop at the edge of civilization.
Bodies of Water introduces a band that have a well-crafted vision of what they want to achieve and the ability to execute that vision almost immaculately. Margaret McCarthy’s brand of no holds barred songwriting is striking on so many levels and the way with words displayed on this record leaves quite an impression.
Silicone Prairie is the solo outlet for Kansas City artist Ian Teeple (of Warm Bodies and the Natural Man Band). Their first full-length release My Life on the Silicone Prairie is accidentally a perfect record for the lockdown era. Recorded at his home on 4-track over the last couple years, it would have been a solitary effort regardless.
Gulch and Sunami put out a split on Triple B Records. The pairing is the perfect summation of where hardcore is at in 2021. Those divisions that existed in the 90’s look really stupid in retrospect. It's all just glorified caveman music at the end of the day. All the different iterations on the genre are welcomed and even more so encouraged now.
