“Sick days for all those who outgrow me ‘cause one day I know you will.”
Since their earliest releases, The Callous Daoboys have made a name for themselves with their genre-warping sound and maximalist approach. Emerging out of Atlanta in the late 2010s, the band cut their teeth on 2017 EPs My Dixie Wrecked and Animal Tetris before releasing their debut full-length Die on Mars in 2019. It wasn’t until their signing with MNRK Heavy and the subsequent release of 2022’s Celebrity Therapist that the group fully hit their stride, with the record and follow-up EP God Smiles Upon The Callous Daoboys pushing the sextet to the forefront of the modern mathcore scene. Now, the Daoboys are ready to unveil their most ambitious project yet with their third full-length album I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven.
Framed as a collection housed in the fictional Museum of Failure, the record is a sweeping exhibition of sonic extremity and surprising emotional candor, a curated gallery of controlled chaos. Opening like a museum audio guide, “I. Collection of Forgotten Dreams” jumps three hundred years into the future. Like a tongue-in-cheek eulogy, the introduction to the I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven collection is both mocking and mourning, fitting for a museum dedicated to enshrining and memorializing failure as spectacle. In presenting the record as an exhibit, the Daoboys invite the listener to not just hear their work, but to examine all the pieces—created by ”heartbreak, anguish, frustration, infidelity, lust, addiction, divorce, and suffering”—with intent and contemplate not just their potential meanings, but the ways in which they’re being communicated. The juxtapositions between display and vulnerability, and between chaos and curation, becomes the collection’s central thread, unravelling further with each successive track.
Following the surreal introduction, “Schizophrenia Legacy,” “Full Moon Guidance,” and “Two-Headed Trout” work as a dizzying triptych, each track striking a balance between their harshest impulses and a sense of melodic clarity. “Schizophrenia Legacy” sets the pace with its angular riffs and abrupt dynamic shifts, with moments of levity like its unexpectedly open and sax-laden bridge section hinting at a broader sonic range to be explored. “Full Moon Guidance” doubles down on weight, driven by jagged guitar lines and double-edged vocals, while lead single “Two-Headed Trout” offers buzzing riffs and a chorus that is undeniably catchy, sarcastic, and self-aware. While purists might decry the more melodic direction the Daoboys’ discography has taken as concessions towards accessibility, “Two-Headed Trout” pushes back, leaning into the fishing imagery its title evokes and promising to “show you all the hooks in my mouth.”
It’s only natural for the Daoboys to flip the discourse started by “Two-Headed Trout” entirely with one of their most blistering works to date in “Tears on Lambo Leather.” A brutalist installation of shrill, piercing riffs, a sudden drop into drum and bass territory, and a feature from Adam Easterling of Orthodox reaffirms that chaos is still a central tenet of the Daoboys’ artistic agenda. Of course, the group once again turns the tables with a strong pivot into “Lemon” afterwards. Easily the most polarizing of the singles released ahead of the album, the track is also one of their most emotionally transparent—even as it cloaks its heartbreak in danceable, moody guitar tones and thinly veiled metaphors about fruit and faulty cars. By doing away with aggression completely, “Lemon” exposes the quiet bitterness at its core, lingering in moments of emotional disconnect, social isolation, and unspoken resentment.
Placed at the album’s midpoint, “Body Horror for Birds” is the museum’s cavernous and immersive central exhibit. You don’t just listen to it—you sit with it, inside it. Functioning as I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven’s de facto title piece, the track stretches into moody, atmospheric territory, full of reverberating textures and vacant space. Where “Lemon” strips away aggression to reveal quiet devastation, “Body Horror for Birds” dismantles what’s left. The larger tonal shift presented by the two tracks invites the listener deeper into the exhibit’s curatorial thesis: that failure takes many forms, not all of them loud. Carson Pace’s subdued delivery is more ghost than frontman, crooning the record’s title like a confession, while a soulful feature from 1ST VOWS (Ryan Hunter of Envy on the Coast) reinforces the emotional weight of the track, straddling the line between mournful and accusatory.
If “Body Horror for Birds” is the museum’s dim, echoing heart, then “The Demon of Unreality Limping Like a Dog” is the violent return to its outer corridors. Released early alongside “Two-Headed Trout,” the moment of familiarity offers a chance to reorient yourself after another jarring tonal shift without dulling the album’s edge. The ensuing pairing of “Idiot Temptation Force” and “Douchebag Safari” launches the listener headlong into the collection’s second half, where the Daoboys’ penchant for chaos resurfaces with renewed intent. “Idiot Temptation Force” is a late-exhibit anomaly, all pummelling riffs, unhinged vocal passages, and dadaist gibberish (“ugga ugga boo”) delivered with knowing theatricality. A city pop-inspired detour only heightens the absurdity, further utilizing disorientation as design. In contrast, “Douchebag Safari” channels its energy into something sharper, incorporating electronic textures to enhance its hostility and deliver one last unfiltered blast of aggression before the final act begins.
As the exhibit’s chaos begins to subside, “Distracted by the Mona Lisa” arrives as the album’s final single and another stark shift in sound as it embraces full-blown pop-punk and easycore aesthetics. Like “Lemon” before it, the track was polarizing on release, but its bright hooks and dramatic vulnerability are entirely in step with the Daoboys’ emotional range. Lyrically, the track grapples with the struggle of balancing romantic and artistic commitments, with lines like “I could’ve picked something easier” and “inefficient little fake rockstar” framing the song’s self-deprecation and longing as the byproduct of a life consumed by creative drive. Much like “Lemon,” the track’s vulnerability is easy to overlook beneath its polished packaging, but as the Daoboys have consistently shown thus far, failure doesn’t always scream—sometimes it sings.
Closing the exhibit is “III. Country Song in Reverse,” a towering, twelve-minute long sonic demolition derby that defies easy summary. With its slow-dripped intro, a whirlwind of stylistic turns, and a mid-track vocal feature from Atlanta’s low before the breeze, the track stands as the band’s most audacious work to date. Grandiose and unwieldy, the track builds toward catharsis without ever losing its sense of control. The chaos is purposeful, the noise deeply felt, and as the final exhibit in the Museum of Failure, “Country Song in Reverse” delivers not just a sense of closure, but the emotional release the entire record has been circling from the start.
Across thirteen tracks, The Callous Daoboys offer a showcase of extremes: absurdity and sincerity, lush atmosphere juxtaposed with sensory overload, and poptimist detours alongside breakdowns that spiral into chaos. The effect is jarring, but it’s also deliberate. I Don’t Want To See You In Heaven is designed to be immersed in, to be walked through like a curated gallery where the collection feels greater than the sum of its parts. The record leaves a lasting impression not because of what any one piece says, but because of how they all hang together and how dissonance becomes its own kind of design.
9/10
I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven is set to release this Friday May 16th via MNRK Heavy. Pre-orders and merch for the record can be found here.