“Cauterized with hot blades down the spine.”
There comes a point where even the most hardened constituents of deathcore need to start being honest with themselves. On one hand, the genre is as consistent as ever. On the other hand, consistent does not always equate to great. These are not mutually exclusive. Grandiosity has saturated a fair bit of what releases nowadays, such that pretentiousness becomes apparent rather quickly. While not universally applicable, misuse of symphonics, overproduction, momentum-killing breakdowns, and overt vocal Olympics has rendered deathcore into a seemingly eternal state of stagnant limbo that has prioritized ostentatiousness over raw quality.
To beat the dead philosophical horse briefly, simplicity is the ultimate sophistication. This long-standing notion is especially pertinent, if for no other reason than the current state of deathcore. The 2000s weren’t that long ago. We all recall self-titled Chelsea Grin, Doom, This Is Exile, The Cleansing, and The Price of Existence as well as the next avid Myspace enthusiast. Amongst the first cornerstone projects of the early era, there is a reason they have all held up for nearly two decades. These records didn’t need a convoluted scope of classical instruments, flawless mixing, or vocal dick measuring contests to sound great. Rather, only crushing instrumentation, generous vocal oscillation, and samples ranging from horror films to true crime, all wrapped in modestly engineered mixing. A focused investment in rudimentary ideals, in the eyes of many, is what has continuously resulted in the best records.
Yet for some reason or another, there began a noticeable artistic drift in the 2010s from what most had considered the golden age of the genre. Without boring us all by propping up any needless discourse surrounding when exactly that might have been, deathcore was nonetheless starting to branch out around this timeframe. Of course, there is hardly anything wrong with experimentation. Shifting methodologies are nothing new in the music space; it is perhaps the single guarantee of the industry. This alteration started to become subjectively problematic when the latter-day sound turned into the de facto norm of what was to be expected.
For as insufferable as many old-school deathcore fans can and always will be, they had reasonable grounds for concern. Given the direction this closely guarded and cherished genre was headed, it is little wonder that progenitive listeners were beginning to feel a sense of existential dread, for lack of a better term. Gore clips, sweeps, and chafed production were in short supply. It looked like the foundational roots had rotted beyond regrowth.
Somehow, it appeared that the Myspace deathcore dudes’ unwillingness to invest in roll-on deodorant, refusal to go outside, and not so much as see what the inside of a gym looked like finally paid off around mid-2023 (this isn’t applicable to all deathcore fans for those who needed a parenthesized footnote to clarify that). Revival era despots PSYCHO-FRAME dropped “24 HOURS LEFT” as their first official song and lead-off single of illustrious inaugural EP, REMOTE GOD SEEKER, in April of that year. A fresh breath of serrated air into a genre that had long been starved of classic essentials, PSYCHO-FRAME immediately became the poster children for the renaissance movement surrounding a lethargic scene. Being the self-declared heels they were, PSYCHO-FRAME doubled down on fuck you’s and unleashed an even more unrelenting display of brutality several months later with AUTOMATIC DEATH PROTOCOL.
Releasing one revolutionary project in your musical career is a feat few can hang their hat on. To do it not once but twice makes you irrefutably generational. Three times? That’s undeniable causality for becoming the pioneers of a transformative sound. Yet, we are all very familiar with an established trend by now: when it comes to PSYCHO-FRAME, there is no such thing as possibility. Everything is certain. Whether it was the Southern US outfit outdoing themselves on each successive iteration, or landing a much-deserved label deal at the start of 2025, PSYCHO-FRAME have been preordained for a long run of continuous success since the very beginning. On their debut record, SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER, PSYCHO-FRAME continue to shatter all expectations and have reduced the very footprint of the era that has inspired them to an insignificant scar. This is not your father’s deathcore, this is the ushering of a fully redefined standard for the genre.
PSYCHO-FRAME has a well-documented shtick of progressively amplifying the weight of their sonic drubbing as their discography has progressed. Between the tandem of EPs that kicked off this campaign of aggression, their audible momentum always began from the very peak and continued to climb indefinitely. Now, PSYCHO-FRAME have graduated from initiating their signature brand of deathcore with punishment to manslaughter. “BLUEPRINTS FOR IDOL GENOCIDE” is a kitchen sink of elemental melding that practically constitutes a weed-out track. Whether it’s the constant barrage of Hunter Young and Dave Mustrange’s hellish riffs complimenting Leo McClain’s fifty caliber blast beats, or a pair of equaliser-bereft antigravity bass drops akin to being sucked into a blackhole, PSYCHO-FRAME snuff out faint-hearted listeners from the very onset, just as they have done before but now to a much more unforgiving degree. Not your thing? That’s fine. You can easily take your “‘Where’s my hug?’ looking motherfucker” ass elsewhere. You’re being visited again by the wrath of the FRAME, and there will be nothing left after the fallout.
One of the most distinct separators that reinforces PSYCHO-FRAME’s innovative approach is a penchant for orchestrating propulsive breakdowns. While modern deathcore is mostly guilty of doing so, there are sporadic examples of even the most beloved traditionalists (Suicide Silence, etc.) indulging in the community-consensus cardinal sin of producing disjointed breakdowns that end up either resetting or completely neutralizing the impetus of a song. PSYCHO-FRAME are anomalous in that regard. At their normal hypersonic velocity, most will be reduced to a pile of ash in no time. But when PSYCHO-FRAME dial the pace back and open the unga-bunga chug floodgates, anything left standing is razed to oblivion. It doesn’t matter if it’s “DRAGGING NAZERENE”, “A FURTHER SHOWING OF VIOLENCE”, or the newest exhibition of hemorrhage-inducing breakdowns on SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER; PSYCHO-FRAME keep the structural integrity of their music well-intact and exponentially more forceful when the tempo drops. “I WON’T BE THERE TO WATCH YOU GO” executes this to a tee. At a lean two minutes, this track bifurcates into very divergent parts, with the beginning section being more death metal-adjacent at warp speed, and the latter juncture a seamless transition into a half-speed execution-by-pickaxe closer.
Technicality is nothing new to revival or grassroots deathcore. Pre-Hate Thy Art Is Murder, old-time Rings of Saturn, you name it; pinch harmonics and finger taps are among some the most fundamental staples of this genre. The difference between what bands of yore and PSYCHO-FRAME pull off on this scale, however, are vastly asymmetrical. PSYCHO-FRAME exhume technical precision on nearly every second of SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER. Between the vast swath of polyrhythmic fluctuation on “INVERTED SPEAR OF HEAVEN” and the groovy hooks of “ENDLESS AGONAL DEVOTION” that could insight a cleaver-wielding decapitation disco party, Young, Mustrange, and McClain have drenched every waking moment of this album with a crimson coat of macabre complexity.
The duo of Mustrange and Young is particularly worthy of immense praise for their craftsmanship here. Hammer-ons, quad chugs, and a limitless arsenal of comparable techniques dominate the fretboard landscape of PSYCHO-FRAME’s latest demonstration of violence. Specifically, the alternation in pitch on the finger taps of “APOCALYPSE THROUGH LYSERGIC POSSESSION”, which complements a volley of bursting pinch harmonics, all whilst riding the coattails of piercing drop-tuned riffs, is befuddlingly ludicrous, yet brilliant all the same. Oh, and in case anyone was too disoriented to notice, this is taken fifty steps further by breaking the chugging crankshaft on “THE PORTAL” and “BLACK_WAVE II” with shotgun shell palming.
For as blatantly imposing as the guitar and bass work from Young/Mustrange is, McClain’s drumming contributions are sonically correspondent in strength. Transitioning between moltenly hot blast beats and crisp poly fills is as physically demanding as it is mentally taxing. For McClain, this appears to be nothing more than another day at the office. “GOD IS BUSY” and “NEURO++TERROR” are highly demonstrative of his aptitude for adding an immovably heavy mass of commanding artillery percussion to SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER’s auditive force. If the strings don’t kill you on this album, the drumming sure as shit will. Be sure to have a bunker entrance nearby; this is as close to mortar field trench warfare as it gets. As a final reminder, too: Yes. The snare is supposed to sound like that. PSYCHO-FRAME‘s tactical nuke snare bombs launch from every possible direction this time around.
When examining modern deathcore, as previously mentioned, excessive vocalization is increasingly cumbersome. PSYCHO-FRAME, as bluntly put as possible, just fucking get it. The duad of vocalists Mike Sugars (ex-Vatican, Church Tongue) and Colter Adams (Killing of a Sacred Deer, Serration, World of Pleasure) trade zealous blows throughout this carnivorous run. Unlike their misguided counterparts, Adams and Sugars know when to briefly flex without detracting from the instrumental prowess of each song or overstaying a single microsecond of their welcome. Even a single vocalist can easily obfuscate the flow of much of what is heard these days, yet Adams and Sugars perfectly time their one-two combos to coincide with the changes in stride on each track. With such anti-patterns turning out to be more prevalent across deathcore, PSYCHO-FRAME are the welcomed antithesis of intrusive reverberation.
For those who have been paying attention to either PSYCHO-FRAME’s flawless body of work thus far or the verbiage of what’s been said to this point, or both, you are likely starting to realize what the driving influence behind PSYCHO-FRAME’s sound is. Don’t think “old Whitechapel and/or All Shall Perish!” to yourself. That’s about as lazy as it gets and couldn’t be a more telltale sign that you’ve been living under a Mariana Trench rock this entire time. Recently credited on the Garza Podcast but also directly cited by the band several times, Dying Fetus are at the motivating forefront of what has become the idiosyncratic reinvention of deathcore PSYCHO-FRAME are renowned for today. Dying Fetus’s mark is engraved everywhere on PSYCHO-FRAME’s musical canvas. Lightspeed verses, labored tech-death breakdowns, and finger taps out the auditory ass on “FILLETED AND FUCKED [S.O.L.]” and “STILL WATER SALVATION”; surely, you’re starting to see the writing on the wall by now. Dying Fetus’s impact on not just death metal and deathcore but heavy music as a whole was already astronomical. Knowing they’ve been the primary subject matter experts that PSYCHO-FRAME have drawn most of their smith work from is another gold-plated feather in their cap. Now more than ever, PSYCHO-FRAME channel every bit of their brutal death metal-parallel ingenuity into SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER.
Sometimes, more is less, and in the case of modern deathcore, that’s regrettably very frequent. Production that sounds too perfect bogs down the tonnage of a song where actual structure turns into a moot aspect. The number of cases where this has been observed are as common as revivalist fanboys passively calling modern deathcore “djent” (please go take a shower and wash away your anger and body odor if this offends you). Digital Ghost Audio couplet Brandan Lopez and Young have once again delivered a polished plate of mixing and production work. SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER always sounds unfathomably heavy, but never to a degree where partitional sound favorability is obvious. All characteristics of this album are equally accounted for and treated with the love they deserve, which makes for an immeasurable amount of replayability. Combined with the assistance of Austin Coupe and Randy LeBeouf, we never had a thing to worry about from the perspective of how tremendous PSYCHO-FRAME’s fresh cut would sound.
SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER is by all accounts the cataclysmic event that will result in a complete reset of what deathcore needs to sound like. No gimmicks. No compromises. No bullshit. Just as technically blistering as possible to the point of eradicating everything that dares to stand in its way. How we tend to look back on some of the most inspirational records over the course of deathcore’s history is how PSYCHO-FRAME‘s debut festival of homicide will be talked about for years to come, and every bit of praise will be warranted. The game has indeed changed, and SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER is the bloodthirsty savage that has smashed all competition to a mangled pulp.
It wouldn’t be appropriate to call PSYCHO-FRAME a generational deathcore band. It would be even less appropriate to label them an all-time supergroup. The fact is, they are nowhere close to being either of those things. That is beneath them. Rather, PSYCHO-FRAME are the presiders over a tectonic shift of deathcore that has resulted in the curation of a newly patented scale by which all subsequent releases in this genre should and will be measured by. There is nothing against other revival bands whatsoever with respect to how they’re helping bring about the rejuvenation of a bygone era that so many of us have painfully longed for. It just so happens that, in comparison, PSYCHO-FRAME are the totalitarian overloads of this resurgence that will continue to sadistically laugh at any ill-advised challengers foolishly attempting to usurp them from their cadaver-laden throne. With SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER, PSYCHO-FRAME have planted another warworn sword in the ground in front of them that outshines all others. Self-affirmation is often frowned upon, yet with PSYCHO-FRAME, it is more than earned. It perhaps feels even more appropriate to annotate all of this by rehashing the famously domineering statement they made two years ago before cementing their rightful place on deathcore’s seat of absolute power: Pack it up. PSYCHO-FRAME are the motherfucking kings of this shit.
10/10
SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER releases on July 25 via SharpTone Records, and can be preordered here.