“In the trenches, stay relentless.”
If you were to ask your average heavy music listener what country produced the most influential bands in the scene, they would most likely tell you their answer is Australia. Whether it’s bands like Parkway Drive, I Killed the Prom Queen, Aversions Crown, or Thy Art Is Murder, there was a time when it seemed like the bands coming out of Australia could do no wrong. Unfortunately, however, over the last seven years or so, it seemed like this hot streak had finally come to an end with most of the recent crop of acts being content to tow genre lines and write rather monotonous sounding octanecore that didn’t have much impact other than scoring radio hits and watering down heavy music. All hope for the Australian scene is not lost, however, as Justice For The Damned are here to save us from the tedium of modern heavy music. Since 2011, Justice For The Damned have consistently written some of the heaviest and grooviest compositions the scene has ever heard. Whether it’s the bludgeoning heaviness of their 2014 EP, Black Vol 1: Slave, or the irresistible headbanging grooves of their most recent album, Pain is Power, Justice For The Damned have managed to find fascinating ways of writing music that manages to stand the test of time while still retaining all the familiar genre elements. While this momentum regrettably came to a halt in 2020 when the pandemic hit, and in 2021 when their drummer was diagnosed with cancer, remission allowed for further productivity come 2025. With that, we are brought to the present day with their newest album, Stay Relentless.
Stay Relentless sees the band stripping out much of the extraneous elements of their sound in a way that shows they can write an album that is straightforward in approach yet still uncompromisingly heavy. The groove that was front and center on the band’s previous albums is slightly more subdued this time around, giving the breakdowns more room to showcase their intended effect: making the listener want to bang their head throughout the full runtime of the album.
The biggest effect on the band’s sound that this more straightforward approach to their already crushing auditory force has is how much more focused Stay Relentless feels when compared to their previous records. By stripping out a minuscule bit of the groove and reducing the amount of buildup that each song has, we are treated to a record that truly fulfills the album title’s mission statement of staying relentless. Right away on the first track, “Retribution in Blood”, we are treated to a short instrumental build-up before immediately transitioning into a massive breakdown that sets up the expectation that the album is going to have a massive impact that few bands these days can even hope to achieve. Just as the song ends, we are immediately thrust into “Built To Be Broken” with a riff section that builds on the ending of “Retribution In Blood”. This tandem of songs immediately showcases how masterful the band’s style can be in this new, forthright technique they’ve used for songwriting on the album. While every song serves to show off this ethos, the closing track “Leave You Behind” exemplifies this approach to the fullest extent by managing to end the album on an emotional note while still retaining the pure heaviness that the rest of the record has.
Another weapon in the band’s repertoire that keeps their sound so irresistible, despite being rather concise overall, is the underlying groove that every song on the album has throughout their varying lengths. While not as front and center as it was on the band’s previous two albums, the charm of the almost primal groove remains as appealing as ever, and there is no better example of this than the first album single, “The Current”. While this is probably the closest Justice For The Damned comes to writing a traditional modern metalcore song from a structural standpoint, their ability to write infectious sections makes the song stand out amongst the pack when it’s compared to tracks written by their peers in the often crowded genre that metalcore tends to be nowadays. Another shining example of their grooviness is the song “Clawing Wounds,” which features vocalist Taylor Barber of Left to Suffer. On its own, Barber‘s guest feature is a rather standard showcase as it’s placed over the breakdown to make an already massive-sounding song sound even bigger. However, whats makes the feature stand out among his rather normally monotonous style of guest features is that Justice For The Damned’s masterfully written groove is layered overtop during the breakdown to give it a rather anthemic quality that shows off Barber‘s strong vocal performance and Justice For The Damned’s masterful means of groove work that makes something that would normally be considered mundane sound extraordinary.
While Stay Relentless as a whole fulfills its mission statement of staying relentless throughout the overwhelming majority of its runtime, the album’s one fault is that, for the most part, its production often sounds too clean for some of the breakdowns to have a lasting effect. A good example of this is the titular track of the album, which, while as a whole, is still a major highlight, the groove throughout its breakdown ultimately fails to have a bludgeoning impact. Rather than having the satisfyingly crunchy production that Justice For The Damned‘s previous album, Pain Is Power, had, the mixing on this track ultimately dulls the breakdown’s force to the point that it doesn’t give the same exhilarating feeling as most of the songs the band has previously composed. While this doesn’t ruin the song or any other track on the album, it is rather frustrating given that their previous records had perfect production for the type of bruising metalcore they were creating.
Stay Relentless continues the band’s legacy of creating some of the most focused and heavy metalcore in the scene currently. While it may not have the production style that it ultimately should, Stay Relentless shows that Justice For The Damned have not slowed down a single bit during their time away from the spotlight. Should they keep up the momentum they currently have, then they could be one of the biggest acts in the Australian heavy music scene very soon.
9/10
Stay Relentless releases this Friday, August 15, via Greyscale Records, and you can pre-order it here.