“It’s all black and white until somebody loses an eye.”
After what was a fantastically busy month with album of the year contenders from the likes of Heriot and 156/Silence, matched with releases from Killing of a Sacred Deer and Wires, we now dive into some of our favourite releases from September that we didn’t quite get to cover.
As Living Arrows – Hope and Ruin (Independent)
The UK is a haven for metalcore right now, and its cousin-genre screamo is poised to benefit from this. Leading the charge of emotionally vulnerable yet destructive bands is As Living Arrows (who used to be called Dead Bird). On their second record Hope and Ruin, a huge winner here are the vocals – a screamo band has to be able to flutter as well as soar, and As Living Arrows brandish a particularly unique vocal style. On tracks like “The Greatest Weight” the spoken word has a deranged timbre, teetering in suspense and anger. The guitars are just as tense, equal parts The For Carnation and Touché Amoré. There’s time for lighter moments on “Sky Reflects Itself” and four six-minute epics, but any tranquillity is balanced with depressing heaviness.
FFO: Touché Amoré, City of Caterpillar & Chalk Hands
Bloom Dream – It Didn’t Have To Be This Way (Independent)
Bloom Dream have put out an absolutely incredible debut in It Didn’t Have To Be This Way. The five-piece conjures an oppressive atmosphere that beckons you in, shredding through seven varied and unforgiving tracks. From bursts of speed on “No Tomorrows 1999” and “Gilded Crowns“, moments of contemplation on “Blackwater“, and noodly turns on “Ambulance“, all twenty seven minutes are varied and fully realised, with crisp production that is absolutely perfect for their sound. The vocal delivery is angry and miserable as frontman Franky contemplates personal misery, inequality, police violence, and the horrors of war. On “Violence” these lyrics become hyper-specific, topping off the record with what could be the best screamo song of the year.
FFO: Nuvolascura, Frail Body & Jeromes Dream
Twenty-Three Hanging Trees – Enclin Déclin (Gizeh Records)
We’ve done another classic Boolin Tunes may-have-missed column and filled it with extreme acts. Even though Enclin Déclin is an ambient record, it’s absolutely extreme in its own way. Xavier Watkins, part of post folk rock band Fuzzy Lights, has kept his side project Twenty-Three Hanging Trees going for seven years, using modular synths to make subtle but hostile epics. Enclin Déclin is two sides of absolute-zero drone, with shrill textures from synthesizers, saxophone, and strings. This is your perfect winter listen when you want to lean directly into the aesthetic of frigid nights and lone street lights.
FFO: Tim Hecker, Éliane Radigue & Abul Mograd
The Breedling – Detritus (Wrong Speed Records)
The Breedling is Chris Spalton, a noise musician whose albums are looping mantras that summon spirits from folklore. Detrirus is his latest, brimming with ritualistic instrumental electronics, accessing nature via digital machination. Spalton fills out these tracks with lurching beats and roving bass drones, soundscaped with samples that have been sieved through complex effect chains. But this record is not without humour: “DEAD BALLS” is apparently about friend’s vasectomy. It’s a terrifying piece that will keep your pulse raised as it slowly speeds up toward a sharp medical alarm, which is ultimately quite tranquil by comparison to what’s just occurred. A measure of calm might be found on “Sky Burial” and “Bleak House“, but all the rest is proper nightmare material.
FFO: Uboa, Puce Mary & :zoviet*france:
Cainhurst – A Sacrifice (Independent)
Emoviolencers out of Bristol, UK, Cainhurst have been building toward this EP for some time through regular live shows. A Sacrifice is five songs that play with shafts of light and hope, snuffed out before our very ears with furious instrumentals and agonised vocals. Highlights include “West of the Sun” which builds to a terrific close, its tempo sliding all over the place as the band try to outpace one another. “Love Made Me a Martyr” quickly indulges in a silly breakdown, and I love the panicked “Their Eyes Were Watching God” which is unrelenting across its entire length. “Wrest Me From the Jaws of Heaven” is a classic screamo closer: the musical equivalent of finding the aforementioned shafts of light, and staring so hard into them that your retinas burn. The tidy and fitting production demonstrates they aren’t messing around. A Sacrifice is the document that will confirm their legendary underground status on the UK’s heavy-DIY circuit, and their sights are set on even more.
FFO: Fly Over States, XclovcktowerX & basque
Kibosh – Your Favorite Curse (Frozen Records)
Setting screamo aside, we come to the metalcore segment of this month’s batch of morsels. Kibosh are a French project and it’s an international crime that we haven’t yet featured them. On Your Favorite Curse they just don’t riff like anyone else – try “Rust & Ember”, which changes direction as much as it can to subvert your metallic hardcore exceptions and confuse the pit to no end. The whole record is just as nutty, with six fully fledged tracks and two more to make for a tidy flow. Kibosh finish on some clean vocals in “Coal Black”, one last nod to normality before smashing out the closing ultra-breakdown. The LP release pops their previous EP It All Feels Like Knives on the B-side, making Your Favorite Curse the defining Kibosh release to date.
FFO: Grief Ritual, Walled City & In Clover
Writheinfear – Cycles(Of Dread in the E.R.) (Independent)
Perfectly positioned to benefit from the current wave of 00s metalcore revival, Writeinfear have hereby cemented their status as a key band in the movement with a new EP. Cycles(Of Dread in the E.R.) is a sandwich of beatdown metalcore, with “…but they still linger”’s precious clean moment and the pretty interlude “(anesthesia dreams)” separating the dreadfully heavy start and end. Trem-picked breakdowns on the title track are another highlight, and the breakbeats of “Flatline Silence” are right up my street. Certainly a nasty band for anyone in the central US to hunt down in a grimy venue, and here’s hoping they can get further afield too.
FFO: Long.Way.Down., Four Winds Away & Wristmeetrazor
Lake Verity – I Behold In Visioned Reverie (OPULENCE)
The debut release from metalcore upstarts Lake Verity is short and sharp. The band’s vocals will knock you out of your seat across I Behold In Visioned Reverie (OPULENCE), the kind of delivery that makes you feel like there will be nothing left of them by the end of the set. The band deliver the foul breakdowns and gratifying riffs that you would hope for, with a grandiose streak in their songwriting (“Incandescent Demise“, “…With My Soul Torn in Two I Will Reclaim What’s Mine“, and “A Farewell To Faces Forgotten” in particular), befitting the lilac romance of the EP’s cover. It really does invoke the sacred 90s Scandi-death metal sound through its guitars, wilting flowers and all, whilst still scratching all the itches you need scratched by a hardcore release. It’s also got that kind of imperfect production that you know you’ll miss when they move onwards and upwards – rest assured, they sound very special already.
FFO: Eternal Rest, Dandelion & Terror Cell
Gun To God’s Head – I Have A Loaded Gun And It’s Aimed At God’s Head (The Coming Strife)
Mr President – The Coming Strife Records have hit us with a second incredible metalcore release this month. Members of Vomit Forth and Silenus have formed Gun To God’s Head and come out kicking and screaming with a four track release. With a name crafted to awaken your inner edgelord, the I Have A Loaded Gun And It’s Aimed At God’s Head EP is metalcore so gritty it will leave your with debris on your eardrums. It documents a profoundly violent band who lurch between breakdowns and circle pit riffs, smoothly blending these songs together to form an unforgiving suite. There’s a sense of purpose that goes far beyond spinkicking on the EP, with the vocal delivery on “Zero” and cutting close to the soul. Finally, we must shout out whoever location-scouted the “New Religious Movement” video – this sacrilege is not just for show.
FFO: DURENDAL, Cauldron & SHOVE