#erra — Public Fediverse posts

#NowPlaying #ERRA

OMG! 😱 I wasn’t aware about the #newRelease coming from ERRA. In my opinion ERRA is one of the few bands, which form #modernmetal or #djenty metal. These are besides ERRA: #Periphery #InventAnimate #Polaris maybe even #Currents
But ERRA has a special place in my heart and one of the few bands, which evolved, still remain true to their core and original sound/style.

I just started to listen the album. But I have a good feeling 🤘🏻
https://album.link/i/1867613901

Crystal Lake is one of those bands that I lost track of. I adored 2015’s The Sign, its blend of hardcore attitude with a surgical metalcore attack and just enough djent and deathcore to make things interesting resulted in some of my all-time favorites in the style (“Prometheus,” “Matrix,” “Hades”). Yes, it’s knuckleheaded and boner-dragging brutality posturing, but for a jolt of breakdown-heavy sonic adrenaline, the Japanese quintet fit the bill. I lost track of them, with albums True North and Helix toning down the weight for an Erra-inspired atmospheric metalcore sound. It has been eight years since Helix entered the scene with a thud, so what can we expect from The Weight of Sound?

The Weight of Sound is the heft of change and consistency alike for Crystal Lake. A notable change is the departure of long-time vocalist Ryo Kinoshita, who released the debut for his solo project Knosis last year, and was replaced by John Robert Centorrino, former vocalist of The Last Ten Seconds of Life. The band acknowledges that Kinoshita’s shoes are nearly impossible to fill; to supplement, Centorrino is backed by an array of guest vocalists: David Simonich of Signs of the Swarm, Taylor Barber of Left to Suffer and Seven Hours After Violet, Myke Terry of Volumes and Fire from the Gods,1 Karl Schubach of Misery Signals and Jesse Leach of Killswitch Engage. Consistently, however, the instrumental approach is the same, bringing back the nu-metal-meets-djent-meets-hardcore chugs (whose absence made the last two outings toothless), as well as that trademark ethereal guitar layers. The result, however, falls woefully short compared to Crystal Lake’s landmark albums, as the knuckleheaded overtakes the thoughtful and the vocals become a monotonous muck.

The Weight of Sound (24-bit HD audio) by Crystal Lake

For positives, when Crystal Lake manages to balance the heavy and the atmospheric, tracks can truly soar. Yearning chord progressions, layers of melodies and sustained trills, and desperate vocals combine to add a nice dose of melancholy and fury, accented by the band’s signature guitar tone that balances djent weight with hardcore urgency. Even Centorrino’s cleans are a nice addition throughout these tracks, distant shouts or croons that recall Brett Gurewitz’s guest spot in Parkway Drive’s “Home is for the Heartless:”: tasteful and subtle. These tracks primarily populate the back half, a calm after the storm of metalcore pummeling, complete with a more somber mood (“The Undertow,” “The Weight of Sound,” “Sinners,” “Coma Wave”) that recalls more melodic hardcore-inflected metalcore acts like Counterparts or The Ghost Inside. The patience in the songwriting of these moments is also noteworthy, as movements feel nicely unhurried and appropriately contemplative.

Crystal Lake’s balance of the atmosphere and chug, as well as vocal charisma, have always been assets, but they plague The Weight of Sound. Don’t get me wrong, I didn’t love Helix’s more light-and-airy vibe, but too many tracks are just too knuckleheaded here to make a splash, particularly the opening “unnecessary contractions” triptych (“Everblack,” “BludGod,” “Neversleep”), which seem like the band’s metalcore answer to Signs of the Swarm’s To Rid Myself of Truth. Meanwhile, other tracks seem to be wildly inconsistent and are true head-scratchers in terms of placement in the tracklist, featuring bluesy Southern vibes (“King Down”) or awkward shifts between heavy and ethereal (“Dystopia,” “Crossing Nails”). Each placement in the playlist at large feels shoehorned and abrupt, from balls-to-the-wall heavy to southern to ethereal, to confused. For the number of guest vocalists that appear throughout The Weight of Sound, Centorrino’s vocals make them difficult to discern with his smokier and denser presence. It’s unclear if this makes him a better performer or if the production value is just that putrid – or both.

To their credit, Crystal Lake hasn’t had to change up their sound since Kinoshita’s departure, and the balance between ethereal atmosphere and chuggy metalcore remains a formidable asset. However, scattershot songwriting and odd track placement doom effectiveness beyond a few sparse moments to break up the confused, knuckleheaded beatdowns. The Weight of Sound is everything you loved about The Sign eleven years ago, but with less identity and more distraction, chugging along for one song before brutalizing you with breakdowns the next. But most notable is Crystal Lake’s lack of direction: The Weight of Sound is all chugs and atmosphere with no clear purpose.

Rating: 2.0/5.0
DR: N/A | Format Reviewed: 320 kb/s mp3
Label: Century Media Records
Websites: crystallake-worldwide.com | facebook.com/crystallake777
Releases Worldwide: January 23rd, 2026

Dear Hollow’s Mathcore Madness [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Dear Hollow

The equation above is AMG’s freakishly rigid and completely objective algorithm for scoring albums and determining quality. We incorporate statistics and abstract algebra, which I understand are very complicated maths, in order to get you the highest quality extreme music this side of the Hudson or Atlantic or Yangtze or wherever the hell you are. The trouble is, you bastards don’t listen to math (i.e. “hurr durr, Wilderun is so much better than this shit.”).1 So I listen to math because I’m a contributing citizen and patriot – I listen to mathcore for you. I wade through the cesspools of skronk and sass – RYM and Reddit – for the best of the best. I do it for the, like, three of you who dig it and the, like, eight billion of you who tell teens to turn it off before shuffling back inside for a bowl of Great Grains. What I do is super mathematical so you know it’s super serious. Mathcore is about as unlistenable and scathing as it is a total sellout – so you can offend nearly everyone who hears it. Random rhythms, migraine-inducing tempo shifts, painful squeals, no sense of melody or counting, vocals a la cheese grater to the throat – it’s skronk. So enjoy my bounties, you three. The rest of you can fuck right off.

Commence panic chords!!

Better Lovers // Highly Irresponsible – Last year’s barnstormer debut EP God Made Me an Animal set one hell of a precedent for Buffalo’s Better Lovers, and their debut full-length does not disappoint. Yes, it’s a revenge album against Keith Buckley’s lesser rival project Many Eyes, but Highly Irresponsible is soooo much more than petty Every Time I Die drama. Amplifying every facet of their sound, you get more manic barks and charismatic croons from legendary former The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato, more chunky riffage from Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney, and more of a southern fried good time from three-fifths of the defunct-and-dramatic Every Time I Die.2 While unafraid to embrace hooky rock sensibilities (“Deliver Us from Life,” “At), the punky, bluesy, and sleazy all-out assaults of tempo-abusing insanity (“A White Horse Covered in Blood,” “Love As An Act of Rebellion”) collide with fret-squealing riff fests of the highest caliber (“Lie Between the Lines,” “Future Myopia”) in an insanely catchy, dynamic, stupid heavy, and stupid fun album with legendary status awaiting.

Frontierer // The Skull Burned Wearing Hell Like a Life Vest As the Night Wept – Look, I get that it’s a thirteen-minute EP released super late 2024, but, c’mon, it’s fucking Frontierer. Somehow seeming more punishing than usual across its four tracks, thick-ass slogs hit like sledgehammers to the temple – translating well across its more frantic moments and slower menace – while rhythms attack with the ferocity and doomed inevitability of a swarm of locusts and vocalist Chad Kapper spits blood, vitriol, and insanity into the mic. Channeling the glacial suffocation that coursed through Oxidized, it doesn’t matter if the tempo is more upbeat and energetic (“As the Night Wept”) or if it’s content sludging in its own muck (“Wearing Hell”), or indulging in both (“The Skull Burned”), the vibrant dissonance swirls in dizzyingly mechanical intensity and the down-tuned riffs smother with ruthless arrhythmic beatdown chugs. While comparable to Ion Dissonance, Car Bomb, and this year’s Weston Super Maim in emphasis on down-tuned mathcore punishment, Frontierer remains one of the genre frontrunners and trendsetters by a significant margin – in a short thirteen minutes.

The God Awful Truth // All That Dark & All That Cold – Denton, Texas’ The God Awful Truth is likely everything love or hate about mathcore. Dissonance spilling sloppily across its shaky breakdowns, deathcore gut-punches, vocal attacks as insane as the squawking panic chords that paint the background like Jackson Pollock on too much crack, and rhythms jolting about like a toddler on a go-cart. Alongside these traditional The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza-isms (“Hail Paimon,” “Street Rat”), there is a lighthearted banter guided by vocalist Jordan LaFerney’s cowboy vocals and resulting poppy rhythms, punky tempos, and loose grind-esque composition (“Symbology,” “Slicked Back,” “Bad Tooth”), though the menacing still manages to punch through when least expected (“The Rainmaker,” “Omelette du Fromage”). It’s brutal whiplash of an album, not a semblance of traditional melody to be found, with deathcore breakdowns acting more as the punchline of a song-long joke. You’ll get a headache, but you’ll have fun along the way.

meth. / See You Next Tuesday // Asymmetrics – Mathcore and noisecore have a lot in common, namely unlistenable blasting. Your favorite Michigan deathcore/mathcore darlings See You Next Tuesday teams up with Chicago noisemongers meth. for Asymmetrics, more a collaborative experiment than a split. Each band records three songs, then shares only the drum tracks with the other, who records another song over that drum track. Toss in guest spots from The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk and Memphis-based sludgecore act Nights Like These, and all elements practically topple under Asymmetrics’ blazing intensity and immense weight. CUNT’s influence in relentless blasters (“The First Steps of Suffering,” “Syntax Error”) and blasting deathcore chug-and-squeal-fests (“Breaking Under the Weight of the Heaviest Burden,” “Tomb of Woe”) collide with meth.’s more ominous slow burns (“Succumb,” “Guest,” “Willing Participant”) in a surprisingly well-rounded package, all wrapped up in a tidy – and fuckin’ noisy – twenty-seven minutes. It’s the best of both worlds!

Utopia // Shame – A breed of technical metal recalling the fretboard-frying abilities of The Human Abstract or Scale the Summit, this UK-based group (including prolific bassist Arran McSporran of Virvum) balances a jazzy warmth and lush atmosphere to balance out the Dillinger rhythmic attack and Psyopus-inspired shredding, made further vicious by vocalist Chris Reese’s attack of frantic fries, manic shrieks, and ghastly roars. From intense attacks of intensity and brutality (“Shame,” “Social Contracts”), wonkier exposes of dissonant motifs and jagged rhythms (“Never Argue With an Idiot,” “The Gift of Failure”), and lush vistas of warm fretless bass and jazzy chords (“Sun Damage,” “Zither,” “Moving Gently Towards the Grave”), the dark themes of shame and morbidity are offset by a truly transcendent atmosphere that ties Shame together into something beyond mathcore.

Missouri Executive Order 44 // Salt Sermon – Absolutely unhinged mathgrind with a religious theme both belying and echoing their LDS missionary aesthetic (short-sleeved white button-ups, ties, shorts, and bicycle helmets) and ominous black masks, anonymous Independence collective Missouri Executive Order 44 approaches a morbid history of religious intolerance with the goal of utter annihilation. Cramming eleven songs into a mere sixteen minutes like blasters Sectioned or Fawn Limbs, you can expect it to hit hard and fast, complete with unhinged mathy meltdowns that spill across the face of concrete rhythm, meatheaded powerviolence chugs (“Christian Pornography,” “They Built a Bass Pro Shop in Our Zion”), surprisingly groovy riffs (“The Unbuckling,” “Seven is a Holy Number”), tied together with vocalist Jarom’s cult leader shrieks and sinner wails, alongside wickedly distorted Mormon spoken word and gospel samples. Posing no stance of their own aside from the dethroning of tyranny, Salt Sermon stands with all its tragedy and iconoclasm, both utterly devastating and utterly enticing.

Shiverboard // Hacksaw Morissette – Aside from the silly genius of the album name, New York’s Shiverboard eludes easy definition. Most consistently planted in grind, art-punk, screamo, and mathcore sensibilities, Hacksaw Morissette deals with fifteen tracks that feel like a shotgun blast. Punk is a common thread coursed through this tapestry of asininity, ranging from Sex Pistols-with-animalistic-snarls (“All Black Snoopy,” “Stain Remover”), complete collapses into noisecore (“Cryptic Bismuth,” “Chastity Jeans”), over-the-top deathcore blares (“Chainsaw Fruit Punch,” “Angelina Shit Ton”), math rock and Midwest emo musings straight outta Delta Sleep or American Football (title track, “Drug Test,” “The Garbage Stork,” “Vitamins of Darkness”), and complete grind and mathcore meltdowns (“If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power,” “Torrential Drencher”) – there’s something for everyone aboard Hacksaw Morissette. With just enough dynamic to keep things interesting but not too much experimentation to throw listeners (thanks to the tasteful brevity), Shiverboard could stand to throw some more my way.

Traveller // Broken Home – Sometimes bumping mathcore is just an excuse to include djent, and Germany’s Traveller falls into this category. Utilizing Erra’s Impulse-era formula, Architects’ melodic sensibilities, a touch of Northlane’s ethereal moments, and a DIY grit whose “loud and ouchy” weight is sure to be divisive. Guided by ferocious roars, sporadic cleans, and “thicc thiccly” breakdowns galore it often emulates that mid-2000s metalcore that recalls a djentier Feed Her to the Sharks (“Never Cared (2002),” “Mismatch,” “Limbo”). Other times, it incorporates a groove and technicality that recalls the shenanigans of last year’s MouthBreather, making it a curb-stomping affair with an edge of the menacing melodies and ethereal keys (“Acheron,” “Orpheus”). Traveller is more djent and less mathcore, sure, but (1) you’re getting a lot more with Broken Home and (2) that’s why it’s at the end of this list.

#2024 #AllThatDarkAllThatCold #AmericanFootball #Architects #BetterLovers #BrokenHome #DeltaSleep #Djent #Erra #EveryTimeIDie #FawnLimbs #FeedHerToTheSharks #FitForAnAutopsy #Frontierer #Grindcore #HacksawMorissette #HardcorePunk #HighlyIrresponsible #ManyEyes #Mathcore #Meth_ #MissouriExecutiveOrder44 #Mouthbreather #NightsLikeThese #Noisecore #Northlane #Psyopus #Punk #SaltSermon #ScaleTheSummit #Screamo #Sectioned #SeeYouNextTuesday #SexPistols #Shame #Shiverboard #TheDillingerEscapePlan #TheGodAwfulTruth #TheHumanAbstract #TheRedChord #TheSkullBurnedWearingHellLikeALifeVestAsTheSkyWept #TheTonyDanzaTapdanceExtravaganza #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #Traveller #TYMHM #Utopia #Virvum #Wilderun

Dear Hollow’s Mathcore Madness [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Dear Hollow

The equation above is AMG’s freakishly rigid and completely objective algorithm for scoring albums and determining quality. We incorporate statistics and abstract algebra, which I understand are very complicated maths, in order to get you the highest quality extreme music this side of the Hudson or Atlantic or Yangtze or wherever the hell you are. The trouble is, you bastards don’t listen to math (i.e. “hurr durr, Wilderun is so much better than this shit.”).1 So I listen to math because I’m a contributing citizen and patriot – I listen to mathcore for you. I wade through the cesspools of skronk and sass – RYM and Reddit – for the best of the best. I do it for the, like, three of you who dig it and the, like, eight billion of you who tell teens to turn it off before shuffling back inside for a bowl of Great Grains. What I do is super mathematical so you know it’s super serious. Mathcore is about as unlistenable and scathing as it is a total sellout – so you can offend nearly everyone who hears it. Random rhythms, migraine-inducing tempo shifts, painful squeals, no sense of melody or counting, vocals a la cheese grater to the throat – it’s skronk. So enjoy my bounties, you three. The rest of you can fuck right off.

Commence panic chords!!

Better Lovers // Highly Irresponsible – Last year’s barnstormer debut EP God Made Me an Animal set one hell of a precedent for Buffalo’s Better Lovers, and their debut full-length does not disappoint. Yes, it’s a revenge album against Keith Buckley’s lesser rival project Many Eyes, but Highly Irresponsible is soooo much more than petty Every Time I Die drama. Amplifying every facet of their sound, you get more manic barks and charismatic croons from legendary former The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato, more chunky riffage from Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney, and more of a southern fried good time from three-fifths of the defunct-and-dramatic Every Time I Die.2 While unafraid to embrace hooky rock sensibilities (“Deliver Us from Life,” “At), the punky, bluesy, and sleazy all-out assaults of tempo-abusing insanity (“A White Horse Covered in Blood,” “Love As An Act of Rebellion”) collide with fret-squealing riff fests of the highest caliber (“Lie Between the Lines,” “Future Myopia”) in an insanely catchy, dynamic, stupid heavy, and stupid fun album with legendary status awaiting.

Frontierer // The Skull Burned Wearing Hell Like a Life Vest As the Night Wept – Look, I get that it’s a thirteen-minute EP released super late 2024, but, c’mon, it’s fucking Frontierer. Somehow seeming more punishing than usual across its four tracks, thick-ass slogs hit like sledgehammers to the temple – translating well across its more frantic moments and slower menace – while rhythms attack with the ferocity and doomed inevitability of a swarm of locusts and vocalist Chad Kapper spits blood, vitriol, and insanity into the mic. Channeling the glacial suffocation that coursed through Oxidized, it doesn’t matter if the tempo is more upbeat and energetic (“As the Night Wept”) or if it’s content sludging in its own muck (“Wearing Hell”), or indulging in both (“The Skull Burned”), the vibrant dissonance swirls in dizzyingly mechanical intensity and the down-tuned riffs smother with ruthless arrhythmic beatdown chugs. While comparable to Ion Dissonance, Car Bomb, and this year’s Weston Super Maim in emphasis on down-tuned mathcore punishment, Frontierer remains one of the genre frontrunners and trendsetters by a significant margin – in a short thirteen minutes.

The God Awful Truth // All That Dark & All That Cold – Denton, Texas’ The God Awful Truth is likely everything love or hate about mathcore. Dissonance spilling sloppily across its shaky breakdowns, deathcore gut-punches, vocal attacks as insane as the squawking panic chords that paint the background like Jackson Pollock on too much crack, and rhythms jolting about like a toddler on a go-cart. Alongside these traditional The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza-isms (“Hail Paimon,” “Street Rat”), there is a lighthearted banter guided by vocalist Jordan LaFerney’s cowboy vocals and resulting poppy rhythms, punky tempos, and loose grind-esque composition (“Symbology,” “Slicked Back,” “Bad Tooth”), though the menacing still manages to punch through when least expected (“The Rainmaker,” “Omelette du Fromage”). It’s brutal whiplash of an album, not a semblance of traditional melody to be found, with deathcore breakdowns acting more as the punchline of a song-long joke. You’ll get a headache, but you’ll have fun along the way.

meth. / See You Next Tuesday // Asymmetrics – Mathcore and noisecore have a lot in common, namely unlistenable blasting. Your favorite Michigan deathcore/mathcore darlings See You Next Tuesday teams up with Chicago noisemongers meth. for Asymmetrics, more a collaborative experiment than a split. Each band records three songs, then shares only the drum tracks with the other, who records another song over that drum track. Toss in guest spots from The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk and Memphis-based sludgecore act Nights Like These, and all elements practically topple under Asymmetrics’ blazing intensity and immense weight. CUNT’s influence in relentless blasters (“The First Steps of Suffering,” “Syntax Error”) and blasting deathcore chug-and-squeal-fests (“Breaking Under the Weight of the Heaviest Burden,” “Tomb of Woe”) collide with meth.’s more ominous slow burns (“Succumb,” “Guest,” “Willing Participant”) in a surprisingly well-rounded package, all wrapped up in a tidy – and fuckin’ noisy – twenty-seven minutes. It’s the best of both worlds!

Utopia // Shame – A breed of technical metal recalling the fretboard-frying abilities of The Human Abstract or Scale the Summit, this UK-based group (including prolific bassist Arran McSporran of Virvum) balances a jazzy warmth and lush atmosphere to balance out the Dillinger rhythmic attack and Psyopus-inspired shredding, made further vicious by vocalist Chris Reese’s attack of frantic fries, manic shrieks, and ghastly roars. From intense attacks of intensity and brutality (“Shame,” “Social Contracts”), wonkier exposes of dissonant motifs and jagged rhythms (“Never Argue With an Idiot,” “The Gift of Failure”), and lush vistas of warm fretless bass and jazzy chords (“Sun Damage,” “Zither,” “Moving Gently Towards the Grave”), the dark themes of shame and morbidity are offset by a truly transcendent atmosphere that ties Shame together into something beyond mathcore.

Missouri Executive Order 44 // Salt Sermon – Absolutely unhinged mathgrind with a religious theme both belying and echoing their LDS missionary aesthetic (short-sleeved white button-ups, ties, shorts, and bicycle helmets) and ominous black masks, anonymous Independence collective Missouri Executive Order 44 approaches a morbid history of religious intolerance with the goal of utter annihilation. Cramming eleven songs into a mere sixteen minutes like blasters Sectioned or Fawn Limbs, you can expect it to hit hard and fast, complete with unhinged mathy meltdowns that spill across the face of concrete rhythm, meatheaded powerviolence chugs (“Christian Pornography,” “They Built a Bass Pro Shop in Our Zion”), surprisingly groovy riffs (“The Unbuckling,” “Seven is a Holy Number”), tied together with vocalist Jarom’s cult leader shrieks and sinner wails, alongside wickedly distorted Mormon spoken word and gospel samples. Posing no stance of their own aside from the dethroning of tyranny, Salt Sermon stands with all its tragedy and iconoclasm, both utterly devastating and utterly enticing.

Shiverboard // Hacksaw Morissette – Aside from the silly genius of the album name, New York’s Shiverboard eludes easy definition. Most consistently planted in grind, art-punk, screamo, and mathcore sensibilities, Hacksaw Morissette deals with fifteen tracks that feel like a shotgun blast. Punk is a common thread coursed through this tapestry of asininity, ranging from Sex Pistols-with-animalistic-snarls (“All Black Snoopy,” “Stain Remover”), complete collapses into noisecore (“Cryptic Bismuth,” “Chastity Jeans”), over-the-top deathcore blares (“Chainsaw Fruit Punch,” “Angelina Shit Ton”), math rock and Midwest emo musings straight outta Delta Sleep or American Football (title track, “Drug Test,” “The Garbage Stork,” “Vitamins of Darkness”), and complete grind and mathcore meltdowns (“If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power,” “Torrential Drencher”) – there’s something for everyone aboard Hacksaw Morissette. With just enough dynamic to keep things interesting but not too much experimentation to throw listeners (thanks to the tasteful brevity), Shiverboard could stand to throw some more my way.

Traveller // Broken Home – Sometimes bumping mathcore is just an excuse to include djent, and Germany’s Traveller falls into this category. Utilizing Erra’s Impulse-era formula, Architects’ melodic sensibilities, a touch of Northlane’s ethereal moments, and a DIY grit whose “loud and ouchy” weight is sure to be divisive. Guided by ferocious roars, sporadic cleans, and “thicc thiccly” breakdowns galore it often emulates that mid-2000s metalcore that recalls a djentier Feed Her to the Sharks (“Never Cared (2002),” “Mismatch,” “Limbo”). Other times, it incorporates a groove and technicality that recalls the shenanigans of last year’s MouthBreather, making it a curb-stomping affair with an edge of the menacing melodies and ethereal keys (“Acheron,” “Orpheus”). Traveller is more djent and less mathcore, sure, but (1) you’re getting a lot more with Broken Home and (2) that’s why it’s at the end of this list.

#2024 #AllThatDarkAllThatCold #AmericanFootball #Architects #BetterLovers #BrokenHome #DeltaSleep #Djent #Erra #EveryTimeIDie #FawnLimbs #FeedHerToTheSharks #FitForAnAutopsy #Frontierer #Grindcore #HacksawMorissette #HardcorePunk #HighlyIrresponsible #ManyEyes #Mathcore #Meth_ #MissouriExecutiveOrder44 #Mouthbreather #NightsLikeThese #Noisecore #Northlane #Psyopus #Punk #SaltSermon #ScaleTheSummit #Screamo #Sectioned #SeeYouNextTuesday #SexPistols #Shame #Shiverboard #TheDillingerEscapePlan #TheGodAwfulTruth #TheHumanAbstract #TheRedChord #TheSkullBurnedWearingHellLikeALifeVestAsTheSkyWept #TheTonyDanzaTapdanceExtravaganza #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #Traveller #TYMHM #Utopia #Virvum #Wilderun

Dear Hollow’s Mathcore Madness [Things You Might Have Missed 2024]

By Dear Hollow

The equation above is AMG’s freakishly rigid and completely objective algorithm for scoring albums and determining quality. We incorporate statistics and abstract algebra, which I understand are very complicated maths, in order to get you the highest quality extreme music this side of the Hudson or Atlantic or Yangtze or wherever the hell you are. The trouble is, you bastards don’t listen to math (i.e. “hurr durr, Wilderun is so much better than this shit.”).1 So I listen to math because I’m a contributing citizen and patriot – I listen to mathcore for you. I wade through the cesspools of skronk and sass – RYM and Reddit – for the best of the best. I do it for the, like, three of you who dig it and the, like, eight billion of you who tell teens to turn it off before shuffling back inside for a bowl of Great Grains. What I do is super mathematical so you know it’s super serious. Mathcore is about as unlistenable and scathing as it is a total sellout – so you can offend nearly everyone who hears it. Random rhythms, migraine-inducing tempo shifts, painful squeals, no sense of melody or counting, vocals a la cheese grater to the throat – it’s skronk. So enjoy my bounties, you three. The rest of you can fuck right off.

Commence panic chords!!

Better Lovers // Highly Irresponsible – Last year’s barnstormer debut EP God Made Me an Animal set one hell of a precedent for Buffalo’s Better Lovers, and their debut full-length does not disappoint. Yes, it’s a revenge album against Keith Buckley’s lesser rival project Many Eyes, but Highly Irresponsible is soooo much more than petty Every Time I Die drama. Amplifying every facet of their sound, you get more manic barks and charismatic croons from legendary former The Dillinger Escape Plan vocalist Greg Puciato, more chunky riffage from Fit for an Autopsy’s Will Putney, and more of a southern fried good time from three-fifths of the defunct-and-dramatic Every Time I Die.2 While unafraid to embrace hooky rock sensibilities (“Deliver Us from Life,” “At), the punky, bluesy, and sleazy all-out assaults of tempo-abusing insanity (“A White Horse Covered in Blood,” “Love As An Act of Rebellion”) collide with fret-squealing riff fests of the highest caliber (“Lie Between the Lines,” “Future Myopia”) in an insanely catchy, dynamic, stupid heavy, and stupid fun album with legendary status awaiting.

Frontierer // The Skull Burned Wearing Hell Like a Life Vest As the Night Wept – Look, I get that it’s a thirteen-minute EP released super late 2024, but, c’mon, it’s fucking Frontierer. Somehow seeming more punishing than usual across its four tracks, thick-ass slogs hit like sledgehammers to the temple – translating well across its more frantic moments and slower menace – while rhythms attack with the ferocity and doomed inevitability of a swarm of locusts and vocalist Chad Kapper spits blood, vitriol, and insanity into the mic. Channeling the glacial suffocation that coursed through Oxidized, it doesn’t matter if the tempo is more upbeat and energetic (“As the Night Wept”) or if it’s content sludging in its own muck (“Wearing Hell”), or indulging in both (“The Skull Burned”), the vibrant dissonance swirls in dizzyingly mechanical intensity and the down-tuned riffs smother with ruthless arrhythmic beatdown chugs. While comparable to Ion Dissonance, Car Bomb, and this year’s Weston Super Maim in emphasis on down-tuned mathcore punishment, Frontierer remains one of the genre frontrunners and trendsetters by a significant margin – in a short thirteen minutes.

The God Awful Truth // All That Dark & All That Cold – Denton, Texas’ The God Awful Truth is likely everything love or hate about mathcore. Dissonance spilling sloppily across its shaky breakdowns, deathcore gut-punches, vocal attacks as insane as the squawking panic chords that paint the background like Jackson Pollock on too much crack, and rhythms jolting about like a toddler on a go-cart. Alongside these traditional The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza-isms (“Hail Paimon,” “Street Rat”), there is a lighthearted banter guided by vocalist Jordan LaFerney’s cowboy vocals and resulting poppy rhythms, punky tempos, and loose grind-esque composition (“Symbology,” “Slicked Back,” “Bad Tooth”), though the menacing still manages to punch through when least expected (“The Rainmaker,” “Omelette du Fromage”). It’s brutal whiplash of an album, not a semblance of traditional melody to be found, with deathcore breakdowns acting more as the punchline of a song-long joke. You’ll get a headache, but you’ll have fun along the way.

meth. / See You Next Tuesday // Asymmetrics – Mathcore and noisecore have a lot in common, namely unlistenable blasting. Your favorite Michigan deathcore/mathcore darlings See You Next Tuesday teams up with Chicago noisemongers meth. for Asymmetrics, more a collaborative experiment than a split. Each band records three songs, then shares only the drum tracks with the other, who records another song over that drum track. Toss in guest spots from The Red Chord’s Guy Kozowyk and Memphis-based sludgecore act Nights Like These, and all elements practically topple under Asymmetrics’ blazing intensity and immense weight. CUNT’s influence in relentless blasters (“The First Steps of Suffering,” “Syntax Error”) and blasting deathcore chug-and-squeal-fests (“Breaking Under the Weight of the Heaviest Burden,” “Tomb of Woe”) collide with meth.’s more ominous slow burns (“Succumb,” “Guest,” “Willing Participant”) in a surprisingly well-rounded package, all wrapped up in a tidy – and fuckin’ noisy – twenty-seven minutes. It’s the best of both worlds!

Utopia // Shame – A breed of technical metal recalling the fretboard-frying abilities of The Human Abstract or Scale the Summit, this UK-based group (including prolific bassist Arran McSporran of Virvum) balances a jazzy warmth and lush atmosphere to balance out the Dillinger rhythmic attack and Psyopus-inspired shredding, made further vicious by vocalist Chris Reese’s attack of frantic fries, manic shrieks, and ghastly roars. From intense attacks of intensity and brutality (“Shame,” “Social Contracts”), wonkier exposes of dissonant motifs and jagged rhythms (“Never Argue With an Idiot,” “The Gift of Failure”), and lush vistas of warm fretless bass and jazzy chords (“Sun Damage,” “Zither,” “Moving Gently Towards the Grave”), the dark themes of shame and morbidity are offset by a truly transcendent atmosphere that ties Shame together into something beyond mathcore.

Missouri Executive Order 44 // Salt Sermon – Absolutely unhinged mathgrind with a religious theme both belying and echoing their LDS missionary aesthetic (short-sleeved white button-ups, ties, shorts, and bicycle helmets) and ominous black masks, anonymous Independence collective Missouri Executive Order 44 approaches a morbid history of religious intolerance with the goal of utter annihilation. Cramming eleven songs into a mere sixteen minutes like blasters Sectioned or Fawn Limbs, you can expect it to hit hard and fast, complete with unhinged mathy meltdowns that spill across the face of concrete rhythm, meatheaded powerviolence chugs (“Christian Pornography,” “They Built a Bass Pro Shop in Our Zion”), surprisingly groovy riffs (“The Unbuckling,” “Seven is a Holy Number”), tied together with vocalist Jarom’s cult leader shrieks and sinner wails, alongside wickedly distorted Mormon spoken word and gospel samples. Posing no stance of their own aside from the dethroning of tyranny, Salt Sermon stands with all its tragedy and iconoclasm, both utterly devastating and utterly enticing.

Shiverboard // Hacksaw Morissette – Aside from the silly genius of the album name, New York’s Shiverboard eludes easy definition. Most consistently planted in grind, art-punk, screamo, and mathcore sensibilities, Hacksaw Morissette deals with fifteen tracks that feel like a shotgun blast. Punk is a common thread coursed through this tapestry of asininity, ranging from Sex Pistols-with-animalistic-snarls (“All Black Snoopy,” “Stain Remover”), complete collapses into noisecore (“Cryptic Bismuth,” “Chastity Jeans”), over-the-top deathcore blares (“Chainsaw Fruit Punch,” “Angelina Shit Ton”), math rock and Midwest emo musings straight outta Delta Sleep or American Football (title track, “Drug Test,” “The Garbage Stork,” “Vitamins of Darkness”), and complete grind and mathcore meltdowns (“If I Can’t Have Love I Want Power,” “Torrential Drencher”) – there’s something for everyone aboard Hacksaw Morissette. With just enough dynamic to keep things interesting but not too much experimentation to throw listeners (thanks to the tasteful brevity), Shiverboard could stand to throw some more my way.

Traveller // Broken Home – Sometimes bumping mathcore is just an excuse to include djent, and Germany’s Traveller falls into this category. Utilizing Erra’s Impulse-era formula, Architects’ melodic sensibilities, a touch of Northlane’s ethereal moments, and a DIY grit whose “loud and ouchy” weight is sure to be divisive. Guided by ferocious roars, sporadic cleans, and “thicc thiccly” breakdowns galore it often emulates that mid-2000s metalcore that recalls a djentier Feed Her to the Sharks (“Never Cared (2002),” “Mismatch,” “Limbo”). Other times, it incorporates a groove and technicality that recalls the shenanigans of last year’s MouthBreather, making it a curb-stomping affair with an edge of the menacing melodies and ethereal keys (“Acheron,” “Orpheus”). Traveller is more djent and less mathcore, sure, but (1) you’re getting a lot more with Broken Home and (2) that’s why it’s at the end of this list.

#2024 #AllThatDarkAllThatCold #AmericanFootball #Architects #BetterLovers #BrokenHome #DeltaSleep #Djent #Erra #EveryTimeIDie #FawnLimbs #FeedHerToTheSharks #FitForAnAutopsy #Frontierer #Grindcore #HacksawMorissette #HardcorePunk #HighlyIrresponsible #ManyEyes #Mathcore #Meth_ #MissouriExecutiveOrder44 #Mouthbreather #NightsLikeThese #Noisecore #Northlane #Psyopus #Punk #SaltSermon #ScaleTheSummit #Screamo #Sectioned #SeeYouNextTuesday #SexPistols #Shame #Shiverboard #TheDillingerEscapePlan #TheGodAwfulTruth #TheHumanAbstract #TheRedChord #TheSkullBurnedWearingHellLikeALifeVestAsTheSkyWept #TheTonyDanzaTapdanceExtravaganza #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed #ThingsYouMightHaveMissed2024 #Traveller #TYMHM #Utopia #Virvum #Wilderun

#TheMetalDogArticleList
#BraveWords
Today In Metal History 🤘 August 10th, 2024🤘
JETHRO TULL, BLIND GUARDIAN, WINGER, WHITE LION, BLACK LABEL SOCIETY

https://bravewords.com/news/today-in-metal-history-august-10th-2024-jethro-tull-blind-guardian-winger-white-lion-black-label-society

#JethroTull #BlindGuardian #Winger #WhiteLion #BlackLabelSociety #IanScottAnderson #HansKursh #JeffKollman #Loudness #MachineHead #DarkTranquillity #LynyrdSkynyrd #TheBinaryCode #Crash #Chthonic #BondedByBlood #EnuffZnuff #Erra #MadMax #PrimalFear #SinSaenum #Infrared #BlindGuardian #Hammerfall #VanHalen #BadBrains