Weekly Roundup: October 7th
Featuring Gutless, Coheed and Cambria, 95 Reunion, and more.
ERRONEOUS BOTCH:
Last week, I had fellow podcaster, Balance And Composure vocalist and guitarist, and effortlessly chill guy Jon Simmons on the show, who returned to discuss the group’s highly anticipated comeback LP with you in spirit. On their fourth studio album and first in eight years, B&C offer a spectral synthesis of all that came before, presenting ten self-assured songs haunted by their collective past and eerily fixated on the allure of the group’s newfound potential.
Jon opens up about his journey of self-reflection, holding himself to account and using vulnerability to shape the band’s most direct and urgent material to date. Check out my chat with Jon below:
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Now, on with the words…
SIDE A:
A curated selection of cool shit for you to listen to.
Coheed and Cambria – “Blind Side Sonny”
I’ve been a fan of Coheed and Cambria since I saw the “Devil In Jersey City” clip on Channel V’s Heavy Shi[f]t programming back in 2003. Following a band’s career for twenty-plus years is strange, but it can also be extremely rewarding when they’re this creative and sonically diverse.
Thirty seconds into their new single “Blind Side Sonny,” I still wasn’t sure this was Coheed, let alone one with the chameleonic vocals of frontman and shredder Claudio Sanchez. All I’m saying is this: find yourself a band that continues to surprise you decade after decade. Watch the video for “Blind Side Sonny” below:
Copse – Wish Ender
Speaking of decades, we’re ten-plus years into the post-Sunbather world and the subsequent explosion of blackgaze (i.e. post-black metal, pretty black metal or “atmospheric” black metal). While there continues to be a glut of dime-a-dozen Deafhavean rip-offs clogging up my inbox and YouTube algorithm (some things never change), it’s comforting that some are taking that blueprint and doing something cool with it.
Enter Bristol metallers Copse: a recent Church Road Records signing and exquisite executioners of the “blast-beat-to-lush-passage-to-triumphant-vocal-melody-propelled-by-concussive-double-kick” move. This shit rips. Stream the two-track Wish Ender single in full here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Dear Seattle – “Evergreen”
Aussie alt-rockers Dear Seattle know their way around a stratospheric chorus, and their new single “Evergreen” is no exception. The track is featured on the quartet’s forthcoming third album, TOY, due next year on January 17th via Domestic La La.
“It’s all too common for people, men especially, to bottle up their emotions and avoid confronting the way they feel because we were never really taught how,” the band shares in a collective statement. “So we sit, and we stew, and we wallow in our thoughts far longer than we ever should. Be it love, fear, anger, guilt, or lust occupying us, learning how to honestly and vulnerably communicate the way we feel is the most useful tool we can master.”
Listen to “Evergreen” here.
Gutless – High Impact Violence
In the same way that having a death metal outfit called Gutless in Australia just feels right, calling your long-awaited debut album High Impact Violence is one hell of a statement of intent. Thankfully, this particular Naarm/Melbourne quartet have followed through on that promise and delivered the goods.
The group recently wrapped a national run supporting US skull-crushers Undeath, making it the perfect time to drop a pummeling full-length through Dark Descent Records (out November 22nd). Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Youtube).
95 Reunion – “Glue”
We’ve got a new three-track from Byron Bay singer-songwriter outfit 95 Reunion, which strikes a particularly personal note. As Bluey (Nerve Damage, 50 Lions, Survival) told me over email:
“I wrote this EP after the end of a seven-year relationship. We didn’t have the capacity to support each other due to our personal well-being at the time. This is pretty well summed up by the line ‘I want to be your glue.’ Sometimes it doesn’t matter how good your intentions are; you just don’t have the capacity.”
The band will be supporting Long Island sensation Koyo in Brisbane this week as part of their forthcoming debut Australian tour. Listen to the title track “Glue” here.
SIDE B:
More tracks for you. Deep cuts for the real heads. Still cool.
Secret Gardens – The Impermanent Amber
This week, the new band on my radar is Secret Gardens: a one-man post-rock project currently working through a series of seasonally themed albums, including 2021’s Tundra and 2022’s Everbloom.
Their new LP, the gorgeously autumnal The Impermanent Amber, is out on October 25th. The lead single, “Persimmon,” caught my attention due to a striking guest feature from Ella Meadows of Transit and Narrowcast fame. I miss/continue to adore Transit, and Narrowcast dropped one of my favourite EPs of 2021, so anything Ella touches turns into gold in my ears. Stream the LP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
Maruja – “Break The Tension”
Experimental Manchester punks Maruja have released a ferocious new single called “Break The Tension” via Music For Nations, which arrives ahead of a massive 40-date headline run across the UK and Europe. The track was spawned from improvisation sessions in rehearsal and is the group’s first release since their acclaimed Connla’s Well EP dropped earlier this year.
If you want bold musical progressions delving into “the darker side of the human psyche,” anchored by frantic jazz motifs, harsh noise and menacing percussion, this is for you. Watch the clip for “Break The Tension” below:
Punitive Damage – Hate Training
We’re one year into the escalation of the Israeli settler colonial project and ongoing Palestinian genocide, with seemingly no end in sight. For Punitive Damage vocalist Jerkova, this conflict is just one of many in a historical throughline of imperialist violence, aggression and subjugation that animates the band’s latest EP, Hate Training (out October 25th through Convulse Records):
“Time after time after time, we fall for the hate training served to us. From the slaughter of the Indigenous peoples in the Americas, to the Third Reich, to the Vietnam War, to the War on Terror–empires point us towards a ‘subhuman boogyman’ that must be destroyed at all costs, and with a big stupid fucking smile we say ‘okay.’ And only after time has passed do we realize how we shamefully fell for the bullshit, and how we can’t ever let that happen again. And we say ‘never again’ or ‘we must learn from our mistakes.’ Yet here we are again.”
Stream the EP’s pre-release singles here (Bandcamp/Spotify).
FEATURE ALBUM:
A closer, more in-depth look at a new record that ticks all my boxes.
Drug Church – PRUDE
Much like I did with 2022’s Hygiene, everything I want to say about Drug Church’s latest post-hardcore opus, PRUDE, out now through Pure Noise Records, is articulated better and in a more witheringly barbed fashion by the band’s acerbic frontman. So here are some of Patrick Kindlon’s recent aphoristic nuggets:
“But mankind/ He’s got no purpose/ But mankind/ It’s all call centers and Percocets/ Picture being built for one thing/ And when that thing is done you feel free.”
“Wishing failure on a stranger/ Eating shit until you choke/ Even parasites have the foresight/ Not to kill their hosts/ Staring through fogged windows/ And calling it a microscope/ It’s not healthy, it’s just control.”
“Lifeboat we’re in is starting to sink/ My high horse is just adding weight/ Entitled attitude lodged in my mind/ But if they’re here and I’m here/ Then who the fuck am I?”
Stream here: Bandcamp | Spotify