Weekly Roundup: June 17th
Featuring Trench, The Black Dahlia Murder, NAILS, and more.
MOSH PITHY:
A curated selection of cool shit for you to listen to.
FIDLAR – “FIX ME”
Southern Cali surf punks FIDLAR are returning with their long-awaited fourth studio LP and it’ll also be their first in over five years. Surviving The Dream is set to drop on September 20th, and the trio have released a new double-single, “GET OFF MY WAVE” and “FIX ME,” to celebrate the release. As frontman and F.O.T.S. Zac Carper states:
“This record is about doubling down on what you love. For us, it’s about playing shows and making music. Coming back after a few years away, our intention was to self-make an album that the 3 of us are stoked on. We’re very, very, very pumped on it and what’s to come. These songs are meant to be heard live with the fellow FIDIOTS going off.”
Watch the video for “FIX ME” below:
The Black Dahlia Murder – Servitude
Beloved death metal institution The Black Dahlia Murder will release their tenth studio album, Servitude, on September 27th via Metal Blade Records. The new LP marks the band’s first record since the tragic passing of frontman and co-founder Trevor Strnad in 2022, with co-founder Brian Eschbach moving from guitar to vocals and former member Ryan Knight returning to the fold to take Eschbach’s place on guitar. As Eschbach states:
“Before the tragedy, no one ever thought this band was going to exist without Trevor. Everyone that’s in the band now is someone that Trevor and I searched for. We spent so much time on the road together that everyone understands the mission statement. We don’t really need to talk about it. We just need to make great music and try to make people happy playing it.”
Servitude marks Eschbach’s recorded debut as Black Dahlia’s lead vocalist and lyricist and their first album with Knight on guitar since 2015’s Abysmal (one of my personal favourites in their intimidating back catalogue). Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die – “Auguries of Guilt”
Indie/post-rock collective The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die have returned with a new single, “Auguries Of Guilt,” and it’s their first taste of new music since 2021’s Illusory Walls—a record I described in my Best of 2021 review as “expansive, proggy, somewhat metal at times, and devastatingly earnest in their potent lyrical poeticism.”
The new track was produced and mixed by the group’s Chris Teti (Fiddlehead, Anxious) at Silver Bullet Studios and portrays a poignant exploration of the “villains” in our stories, killed by those who are seen as history's winners. As vocalist David Bello explains:
“The people in stories that get labelled as heroes are often brutal killers, capable of extreme greed and cruelty on behalf of their allies and their desires. This song tries to smudge historical and present-day conflicts with the emotions of loss and vengeance. It's about the queasy feeling of rooting for a matador.”
Listen to “Auguries of Guilt” here.
Doubt – Held In Contempt
A new band on my radar this week is hardcore outfit Doubt. On their latest singles, the quartet emerges ferocious and untameable in the vein of local legends like Trapped Under Ice, along with an injection of the West Coast attitude that helped define Trask Talk and Ceremony.
The Baltimore band’s new EP, Held In Contempt, is out on July 12th through Get Better Records, and as part of the city’s new wave, it’s billed as “a manifestation of the area’s promise for future excellence.” From what I’ve heard so far, the riffs are hard, and vocalist Claire Abila sounds like a woman possessed. It’s good shit. Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
RedHook – “Cannibal” (feat. Alpha Wolf)
In their continuing rollout of stellar new singles for 2024, Gadigal/Sydney-based genre-benders RedHook are back with another wild cut, and this one’s got a heavy feature from Lochie Keough of Alpha Wolf. “Cannibal” is billed as “Nine Inch Nails meets ‘WAP’”: “a dark and sexy industrial metal stomper inspired by both bands’ collective vision to celebrate more sexual liberation, and particularly female sexual empowerment in heavy music.” Big time, hell yeah, right there.
But on a more personal note, the track also functions as a reclamation of intimacy and desire for vocalist Emmy Mack:
“I wanted to write [an] empowering metal anthem that would help me smash some of the stigma and shame around sex that I felt for a long time after surviving sexual assault. Consensual sex is one of the most awesome things in the world! And we’re beyond grateful to the legends in Alpha Wolf for backing this vision, for helping us inject more sexual liberation into the world of heavy music, and above all, for conspiring with us to create a horny metal song about oral sex that people can fuck to.”
Listen to the lead single “Cannibal” here.
NAILS – Every Bridge Burning
After an eight-year hiatus, the sonic force of NAILS has reemerged once more, ready to dish out the true violence of extreme music. Guitarist, vocalist, and conceptual mastermind Todd Jones's upcoming studio album, Every Bridge Burning, will be released on August 30th via Nuclear Blast Records. Recorded at God City Studios with Kurt Ballou, Jones states:
“We’ve recorded every album with Kurt. He’s such an important ingredient as to how we present our music. When our fans want to hear NAILS, they want to hear something that is through the filter of Kurt’s engineering.”
Jones adds: “This band was modelled after some of my favourite bands; the type of bands where, when they put out an album, you know what it’s going to sound like, it’s the delivery of the expectation.” And I expect nothing less than sheer sonic mayhem. Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Spotify).
Trench – “Divided Between New Skin”
Calgary’s hardest are back with a brand new banger that’s actually three singles in one. Trench’s newest release, “Divided Between New Skin'“ represents a hefty progression in the band’s future-tinged metalcore sound: heavier instrumentals, more experimental electronic elements, and challenging vocals. It’s spectacular stuff.
The track’s accompanying visual animation tells the story of “retrieving an intergalactic soldier who mysteriously perished on their quest. After finding the soldier, they are restored and recreated into a new and improved body being through a series of protocols.” It’s an outstanding companion piece, and it gives me some big Akira and/or Neon Genesis Evangelion vibes (for all my anime heads out there). Watch the full clip for “Divided Between New Skin” below:
Earthtone9 – In Resonance Nexus
Another new band this week, but this time, they hail from Britain, and they’re not really “new” (well, excluding me, that is). Earthtone9 have announced their return and first album in eleven years, In Resonance Nexus, due out on June 21st. The LP comes out of almost rebuilding the band following their second hiatus, allowing them to reconnect with the elements that made their first trio of albums in the late 90s/early 00s so special and important. According to vocalist Karl Middleton:
“For me, this album is about persistence in heart and knowing that you can pursue stuff and do it to a high standard at any point in time. It’s more vital and urgent. This feels like a definitive statement.”
Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Spotify).
Listen to all these tracks and more on the TPD 2024-7 HITS playlist, updated weekly.
HEAVY METTLE:
A closer, more in-depth look at a new record that ticks all my boxes.
Stand Still – Steps Ascending
If Koyo’s debut LP, Would You Miss It?, was one of my most anticipated listens of 2023, then Stand Still are holding it down for Long Island yet again in 2024. I talked about the quintet’s singles earlier this year and quipped about needing a full-length this year. Well, ah, I guess they heard me, folks, because Steps Ascending is here, and it’s out now through the good folks at DAZE.
I’ve been following Stand Still since their A Practice In Patience EP in 2021, followed by their second EP, In A Moment’s Notice, in 2022. They’ve long been inspired by acts like The Movielife, Silent Majority, and Crime In Stereo, and their debut record stays true to their anthemic take on melodic hardcore while also bringing in some of their heaviest-ever moments. It’s great.
Stream here: Bandcamp | Spotify
ERRONEOUS BOTCH:
Returning Down Under for the first time in six years this August, Jeremy DePoyster of The Devil Wears Prada joins The Pitch pod last week to give us the lowdown on the Ohio sextet’s hectic schedule. We chat about the chill vibes of the summer festival season, reflections on the band’s twenty-year metalcore legacy, curating a stacked setlist from multiple eras, and their songwriting alchemy moving into LP#9. Check it out below: