Revisionist Western

  Out of nowhere, one of my favorite dark hardcore bands just dropped a new album and it's exactly what I want from them. Dark Circles put out a number of fantastic, raging crust albums about six or so years ago. I remember the timing explicitly because, when they were dropping albums, it was when I was living somewhere I wasn't thrilled about living and Dark Circles where one of the bands that really got me through that time. This album picks up exactly where they left off, with a punishing chainsaw-crust sound that manages to keep an undercurrent of melody running through the songs to keep them interesting, even as they pummel you with noise. I would liken them to bands like Barren, The Secret, and Trap Them. I would also note that they were a direct influence on my hardcore band, in particular the first album which was written while I was mainlining their first two albums. Please, please check out Dark Circles. It's PWYW so you have no excuse not to.  Frantic Death by D...

LUME's 2018 album Wrung Out was a solid dose of heavy post-grunge, sort of like an amalgam of Floor and Hum. They delivered on that nice combination of big guitars, hooky songs, and sleepy vocals that feels like the best of the 90s with a contemporary sheen to it. False Calm, their new album, takes that basic formula and adds a whole lot more space . The album is full of sprawling sparse, ambient, soundscapes which make it feel less like a collection of individual heavy songs and more like a single, rolling, sonic ocean of soft-loud-soft dynamics. It's a really rewarding listen, and manages to be engaging and throughout, whether the band is presenting you with crushing noise or barely audible, droning whispers. It's a nice step forward for LUME and represents an impressive evolution of their sound. Head over to Bandcamp and give it a listen. False Calm by LUME

Damn, this is right up my alley. Just wanted to draw some attention to this great two track preview of Leviatán, which appears to be an upcoming album by Spanish band Ansïa. These two tracks are some really well written, melodic neocrust, seamlessly blending mid-tempo, melodic hardcore, with some anthemic, atmospheric sludge and grind. Neocrust is, obviously, one of my favorite genres and I'm really stoked to hear a band do it so well. This preview is NYP and I'll be sure to mention if and when the full album drops. prewiew Leviatán by Ansïa

I’ve spent a not insignificant part of my life wonder what makes a song sad. Is it... Wait, hold on. Real quick, before I go wandering down this "sad song" rabbit hole: this record is one of the best things I’ve heard all year.  Okay, back to the sad song question.  The obvious answer is that lyrics set the emotional tone for a song. Writing about something sad makes a song sad. But Sammy Hagar has written songs about breakups and when I hear them I don’t think “hey, this breakup song makes me sad,” I think “oh good, whoever this song is about doesn’t have to be around Sammy Hagar anymore.” Most sad lyrics don’t feel like they’re about a specific person or incident or experience. They feel like generic platitudes that could be written by anyone about anything. Put more bluntly, Sammy Hagar lyrics aren’t sad because even when Sammy Hagar writes about something sad, his lyrics lack any sort of specifics or details that would suggest the vulnerability necessary t...

First thing's first. That album title is amazing. "Satan is Our Liberator, We Deserve Freedom Without Shame?" Come on. Poetry. Now that we've got that out of the way, Coward Punch are a relatively new doom band from Sydney, Australia. Like (DOLCH) , Coward Punch straddle industrial and doom, but where (DOLCH) took the formula of driving drum machine beats and heavy riffs in the direction of something pretty and ethereal, Coward Punch move in a grimier, uglier direction. While there are truly gorgeous ambient passages in these songs, the bulk of the album is thick sludge riffs with throat ripping vocals layered over them. An obvious comparison would be something like Godflesh, but the band they actually most remind me of is Hyatari , the underrated drone/doom band from the early-2000s, albeit with some screaming vox in the mix. I'm not always a fan of the mixture of industrial and sludge (the aforementioned Godflesh doesn't really do much for me), but the ...

Dumange is a Spanish neocrust band and this appears to be their first release. Dropping a single, 40 minute song as your first release when you're a crust band is a gutsy move, but Dumange pull it off with this release. Writing long songs when you're a hardcore band always means that you have to use every trick you have to keep things interesting in a genre whose tools are designed to give you minute long bursts of energy. Dumange combine a variety of sounds and textures in this song, ranging from driving, post-rocky parts, to gentle passages with whispered vocals over them, to full on raging d-beat. The end result is something that, to me, sounds like melodic crust like Remains of the Day or Deszcz mixed with Envy or City of Caterpillar. If any of that is your jam, this is PWYW over at Bandcamp. I'd recommend it.   Entre ratas by Dumange

Okay, kids. History time. There was a point, back in the 90s, when a genre called "screamo" didn't exist and most bands that played what now gets called screamo actively rejected the label (because, let's be honest, it's an embarrassing term). Those bands (including bands I was in that sounded like that) typically thought of what they were doing as good old hardcore, albeit slightly outside the box hardcore. Then, somehow, the "screamo" label started to stick, and then later generations needed a whole new word (skramz) to differentiate original pretty good screamo from later much worse screamo. Which I get. If I were 22 I wouldn't want to admit I listen to a lot of "screamo" from the the last ten years, either. Anyway, where I'm going with this is that Lagrimas is a band from Los Angeles that sits right at this intersection in a way I really appreciate. What I think people responded to about the 90s hardcore that gets called sk...

Prague-based solo black metal project Eerie Heir's first release, We Were Beautiful Once , is gloriously depressing in that way only spacey black metal can be. Alternating between dreamy, effects-drenched fog and sparse, clean strumming, the EP uses its relatively quick 18-minute running time to paint an impressionistic picture of pain and loneliness. The work is a genuine testament to how the aesthetics of an album, from the artwork to the song titles to the texture of the recording, can complement the music. From the decidedly not-very-metal-yet-perfectly-evocative cover, to the album title, to the distant, lo-fi sound on the album, the whole thing feels like a small, intimate diary of someone's quiet ruminations on sadness. When I listen to a sparse instrumental song called "I've Always Thought I had Time" or a slow-burn piece that builds from and an ambient introduction to a thick wall of distortion by the end titled "Never Worn Wedding Dress," ...

(DOLCH) is a German two-piece band that sits quite comfortably at the intersection of doom, black metal, and industrial. To my ears, they remind of a slightly more straightforward Nadja or, conversely, a prettier, ambient Godflesh, with a similar sort of droning, drum-machine driven, heavy churn at the center of most of their songs. They tend to build long songs around a single part or two, layering ambient, soundscapey backgrounds under ethereal vocals. I strongly suggest giving this album a spin over at their Bandcamp page. Feuer by (DOLCH)