Weekly Roundup: March 21st
Featuring A Mourning Star, Cave In, Praise, and more.
MOSH PITHY:
A curated selection of cool shit for you to listen to.
Dazy & Militarie Gun – “Pressure Cooker”
In a meeting of East and West, Richmond alt-rocker James Goodson aka Dazy has collaborated with L.A. hardcore collective Militarie Gun, the brainchild of Regional Justice Center vocalist Ian Shelton on a new single. Recorded and mixed by Dinosaur Jr. engineer Justin Pizzoferrato, “Pressure Cooker” is a fuzzed-out number that plays like a feel-good hit from a distant 90s summer. The hook is undeniable and it’s an absolute bop. Watch the video for “Pressure Cooker” below:
A Mourning Star – …To See Your Beauty Fade
Coming through with an absolutely stellar debut EP, Vancouver quintet A Mourning Star have released …To See Your Beauty Fade through The Coming Strife. It’s a sincere love letter to the late 90s/early 00s metalcore sound with raw production, moments of crushing heaviness and touching ambience, saturated through by raw emotional heft—think early Poison The Well, 7 Angels 7 Plagues, Skycamefalling, etc. They really nail the presentation on this one, both musically and aesthetically, and alongside other groups like Foreign Hands and Excide, this sound appears to be coming back with a mighty vengeance. Stream the EP in full here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Mad Honey – “Odds”
The Sunday Drive Records roster has been going from strength to strength in recent months, most noticeably with the inclusion of Oklahoma indie-rock outfit Mad Honey. Utilising their Southwestern hard-on for 90s dream-pop and shoegaze, the five-piece conjure up the perfect mix of hallucinogenic rowdiness on their latest two-track single with swirling guitar leads and lush dual-vocal harmonies. Listen to “Odds” here.
Incandescence – Le Coeur de L’homme
I’m not sure why exactly, but Québécois metal just hits different. The project of multi-instrumentalist Philippe Boucher (Beyond Creation, Chthe’ilist) and vocalist Louis-Paul Gauvreau, Incandescence have returned with another slab of epic, bone-breaking black metal fury for Profound Lore Records. Like all good black metal albums, the eight-track Le Coeur de L’Homme (out April 15th) expertly splits the difference between fraught and frenetic, majestic and melancholic. Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Cancer Bats – “Lonely Bong”
Psychic Jailbreak, out April 15th through their own Bat Skull Records label, represents a few firsts for Canadian road-dogs Cancer Bats. The band’s upcoming seventh LP is their first album in four years since 2018’s The Spark That Moves. And the album also marks the band’s first release since the departure of founding guitarist Scott Middleton in October last year. Thankfully, however, the band’s patented formula of mixing hardcore sweat and beers with headbang-worthy riffs and gutter punk swagger remains thoroughly unchanged. Listen to “Lonely Bong” here.
Praise – All In a Dream
Longstanding melodic hardcore unit Praise are finally ready to drop their new record. The group’s third album, All In A Dream, is out May 6th via Revelation Records, and it explores themes of introspection and the evolution of grief over time. It’s a record full of urgent, arresting hardcore tunes that will sit right at home with fans of Strike Anywhere, Lifetime, Paint It Black, and Fiddlehead. Stream the LP’s title track here (Spotify).
Cave In – “New Reality”
Boston legends Cave In are one of those bands that sit at the forefront of my mind. I vividly remember the first time Jupiter’s eclectic post-hardcore fusion melted my brain. I remember how the pissed-off aggression of “Trepanning” caught me completely off guard. I remember listening to “Sing My Loves” and picking my jaw off the floor after the track’s seismic finale. Suffice to say, I’m super pumped to hear Heavy Pendulum (out May 6th), the quartet’s first studio record since 2019’s Final Transmission and their Relapse Records debut. The album also features Nate Newton (Converge, Doomriders, Old Man Gloom) on bass and vocals, replacing original bassist Caleb Scofield, who died in a 2018 car accident at the age of 39. Watch the video for “New Reality” below:
Onelinedrawing – Tenderwild
I first encountered Jonah Matranga through Far’s At Night We Live (2010). It was the type of indie-adjacent, alt-rock record that made me want to dive right into Matranga’s back catalogue and see what else was waiting there. Alongside his other projects like New End Original and Gratitude, Matranga is now reviving the Onelinedrawing moniker for the first time since 2004, returning with a new album and a fresh slew of collaborators, including Zach Lind (Jimmy Eat World), Jeremy Tappero (Soul Asylum), Norman Brannon (Texas Is The Reason), Chris Carrabba (Dashboard Confessional), John Gutenberger (Far), and Jake Snider (Minus The Bear). Tenderwild is out on June 24th through Iodine Recordings. Stream the LP’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.
Oso Oso – Sore Thumb
Surprise albums are great. Why, you ask? Well, for people like me (read: music writer obsessives) who can’t help but devour fawning press releases, dive through production credit minutiae, needlessly close-read album artwork for hidden clues, and scour the Internet for miscellaneous details prior to release, sometimes it’s nice to have a record drop fully formed and ready for consumption without any expectations what-so-ever.
Such is the case with Sore Thumb, the highly-under-anticipated fourth LP from Oso Oso mastermind Jade Lilitri. Arriving only a few weeks after the release of his latest single “Pensacola,” the record is a twelve-track exercise in working through your shit in your own way. In a press release, Lilitri states:
“The making of this record is now a memory of a time that I hold closer to my heart than anything. Regardless of how I feel about these songs in the years to come, I am so happy this exists. Thanks for listening. Be decent.”
After decamping to Billy Mannino’s Two Worlds Recording Studio in Queens, NY (the same guy behind Lilitri’s phenomenal 2017 album The Yunahon Mixtape), Sore Thumb was recorded with Lilitri’s cousin Tavish Maloney, who would tragically pass away at age 24 only one month after recording wrapped up. Aside from having the album mixed by Mike Sapone (Brand New, Crime In Stereo, 2019’s Basking In The Glow), the twelve tracks that constitute this new LP have been left largely unchanged, preserving the demo-like, time capsule effect Lilitri describes above.
Death is a strange thing, and it’s clear that releasing Sore Thumb in this holistic fashion, absent of expectation, was all part of Lilitri’s healing process. As he sings on the devastating bridge of “Nothing To Do”: “Entered a light/ A temper defined/ Left, right, in time.”
seriously appreciate the story of finding me and digging into the rest, thx for shoutin it out. substack is a pretty neat platform huh? curious.