Weekly Roundup: April 25th
Featuring Spirit Adrift, Vatican, Death Bells, and more.
MOSH PITHY:
A curated selection of cool shit for you to listen to.
Death Bells – “Lifespring”
After dropping a slew of pre-release singles following 2020’s New Signs of Life, Sydney-via-L.A. post-punk outfit Death Bells have finally announced their latest full-length album, Between Here & Everywhere, to be released on July 29th through Dais Records. Recorded with Colin Knight at Paradise Studios and mixed by Mike Kriebel at Golden Beat, the LP represents a mature growth for the duo of Will Canning and Remy Veselis, incorporating a talented cast of contributors for lush keys, strings, piano, and operatic backup vocals. Watch the mesmerising video for the band’s new single “Lifespring” below:
Spirit Adrift – 20 Centuries Gone
Once again proving themselves to be the most prolific heavy metal act on the planet, Spirit Adrift are back with yet another annual release and the follow-up to last year's Forge Your Future EP. Keeping their alphabetic title scheme intact, the band’s latest project is 20 Centuries Gone (out August 19th via Century Media): an eight-song collection featuring two original tracks and six cover songs, including classics from Type O Negative, Metallica, Thin Lizzy, ZZ Top, Lynyrd Skynyrd, and their previously released rendition of Pantera’s “Hollow.” Stream the compilation’s pre-release single here (Spotify/Youtube).
The Wonder Years – “Oldest Daughter”
Pop-punk icons The Wonder Years have returned with a brand new single, "Oldest Daughter," and it’s a heartfelt ode to begrudging sibling acceptance. The track follows 2018’s Sister Cities and connects lyrically to “Madelyn” from 2013's career highlight, The Greatest Generation. It sports the type of melodic progressions and earworm hooks the Philly sextet have made their name with, so here's to hoping that they also have a new record on the way. Listen to “Oldest Daughter” here.
Tzompantli – Tlazcaltiliztli
I’m a huge sucker for metal with a rich cultural history. Give me esoteric mythology, ancient civilisations, or labyrinthian concept albums, and I'm a happy man. On their debut LP, death-doom outfit Tzompantli are channelling “the splendour, brutality and despair... of Native / Indigenous themes, rituals and history.” The group’s name comes from “a rack used to display human skulls, often of enemies or sacrifices, in several Mesoamerican civilisations,” and their LP, Tlazcaltiliztli (out May 6th through 20 Buck Spin), translates to “nourishing the fire and sun with blood.” Now, if that doesn't sound to like the coolest, most metal shit in the world, then I don’t know what else to tell you. Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Static Dress – “fleahouse”
With their long-anticipated debut LP, Rouge Carpet Disaster, almost here (dropping May 18th through Venn Records), Leeds quartet Static Dress have released the album’s final single, the delightfully anthemic "fleahouse." Much like their previously released lead single “such.a.shame,” this latest effort exemplifies the three-minute post-hardcore rager, with captivating hooks, backing screams, and an angular lead riff to carry the tune. I can’t wait to hear this record. Listen to “fleahouse” here.
Burner – A Vision of the End
UK hardcore is on some next level shit right now, and London bruisers Burner seem more than happy to add some chaos into the mix. The band were listed as one of Metal Hammer’s “12 bands to watch in 2022,” and the upcoming release of their debut EP, A Vision for the End (out June 17th through Church Road Records), is set to make good on that promise. The quartet are ready to bulldoze their contemporaries to dust, fusing destructive, rhythmically dense hardcore with death metal's airtight playfulness and devastation. Stream the EP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Vatican – “Reverence”
The video for “Reverence”—the latest single from Savannah, Georgia, metalcore five-piece Vatican—is a real trip. There are sweeping shots mixed with tight close-ups, frenzied hand-to-hand combat, and bouts of slash-happy swordship. It rules. The track features on the group’s latest record, Ultra, out June 17th via UNFD, with new vocalist Mike Sugars (formerly of Church Tongue) making his album debut. I've been a big fan of Vatican's affinity for dizzying polyrhythms, abrasive compositions, and an all-things cyber aesthetic, so this new record is shaping up as a promising development for the group. Watch the cinematic video for “Reverence” below:
Squint – Feel It
With members pulling double duty in acts like Time and Pressure, New Lives, Soul Craft and Choir Vandals, St.Louis quintet Squint lend a distinctly melodic, alt-rock soundscape to their bouncy hardcore rhythms. Feel It, the band’s five-track debut EP, drops on April 29th through the good folks at Sunday Drive Records, and it's a must-listen for fans of fuzzed-out guitar tones and big catchy riffs. Stream the EP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Listen to all these tracks and more on the TPD 2022 TUNES playlist, updated weekly.
HEAVY METTLE:
A closer, more in-depth look at a new record that ticks all my boxes.
Fontaines D.C. – Skinty Fia
When people speak about records as coming from a specific “time and place,” there’s usually an emphasis on the first word. Albums you loved in your youth, albums you listened to with your various exes, albums playing at pivotal moments in your life, forever chained to those memories in your mind. Yet for Irish ex-pats Fontaines D.C., their latest LP is irrevocably tied to the latter.
In a tell-all profile with Rolling Stone, frontman Grian Chatten details how the band’s reality as Irishmen living and working in London throughout the pandemic informed the album’s sense of loneliness, isolation, and estrangement: “A lot of it is revealing itself to me to be largely informed and influenced by Irishness existing in England and mutating and becoming a new kind of culture in general.” The album’s name—Skinty Fia—stems from an archaic Irish slur meaning “the damnation of the deer,” a colloquialism that has itself mutated from an off-the-cuff swear to something encompassing the fractured, diasporic nature of Irish identity.
Elsewhere on the record, place continues to haunt narrative digressions: “In ár gCroíthe go deo” recalls a dispute surrounding an Irish woman’s gravestone in Coventry; “Bloomsday” acts as a soothing love letter to Joyce’s Dubliners; and “The Couple Across the Way” finds Chatten voyeuristically entering the lives of his elderly neighbours, ruminating on manifestations of empathy and love. It’s fitting then that the album ends with “Nabokov,” an ex-pat who, like Fontaines D.C., knew that longing and adoration were powerful, almost spiritual inclinations for creative soul-searching.