Here at Revolver, we pride ourselves in living on the cutting edge of heavy music, from metal and hardcore to industrial and hip-hop, and we try to keep you on the front line, too, by giving you a deep look at the innovative noisemakers poised to shape the sound and the scene.
To that end, we’ve rounded up a handful of musicians who, we think, are on the rise across several different genres — from septically spew-screamed death metal to vengeful hardcore.
ALT BLK ERA
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Poppy, Scene Queen, Nova Twins
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE U.K. sisters Nyrobi and Chaya grew up with disparate music tastes but unending admiration for each other’s creative sensibilities, which explains why their infectiously splatter-jammed singles and EP as ALT BLK ERA sieves through elements of rock, punk, rap, glitched-beated electronica and more. Due next year through Earache Records, the duo’s debut album, Rave Immortal, is primed to be a fantastical blur of indie-punk guitar hooks and operatic whimsy, while thematically the record will ping between heavy topics such as chronic illness and lighter fare like “My Drummer’s Girlfriend,” a recent single about getting triggered by your bandmate’s coke-dusted love interest.
QUOTE The band’s handicam-hoisting “My Drummer’s Girlfriend” video is true to life, with Nyrobi noting that she and her sister grew up filming each other singing covers to upload to YouTube, before formally carving their joint musical path as ALT BLK ERA. Chaya adds that being on-camera so much has kept them in line over the years, for example when they performed at a smoked-out Swiss music festival: “As a show of appreciation for our set, one of the audience members offered me a puff of their joint. I was 15 and my mum was stood there with her eyes locked on me and was filming the whole thing. I politely declined their kind offer.”
DOUBT
RIYL Trapped Under Ice, Rival Mob, Trash Talk
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Most of Baltimore quartet DOUBT met while working at a coffee shop/plant store, where they bonded over hardcore picks for the daily playlist and thumbs-upped each other’s punk shirts. Outside of the workplace, they joined forces for the new Held in Contempt EP, which marks a ruthless mix of D-beat intensity, barbed boxing glove beatdowns, and give-no-quarter missives targeting shit-talkers, egocentrics and the predatory wolves sniffing around the music scene.
QUOTE “The message of revenge is prevalent throughout our music because it was written to take back the narrative from all the people who’ve done me wrong in my past,” vocalist Claire Abila tells us of her lyrics. “It’s all about standing 10 toes down and owning the fact that you have the power and the control. You can make them pay for what they did, and you will. Without a second thought or any kind of remorse.”
Mirar
RIYL Vildhjarta, Humanity’s Last Breath, Sergei Rachmaninoff
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE The past year has found French outfit Mirar terror-scaping the thall scene and short-circuiting the metal guitar YouTube reaction community through a series of staggeringly flop-stringed standalone singles, building up to the recent release of debut EP, Mare. The decadently percussive approach of co-conspirators Léo Watremez and Marius Elfstedt distorts the classical beauty of Rachmaninoff compositions with post-djent fluctuations and dubstep-style production screeches. But EP closer “Cauchemar” — which Watremez says reflects “insomnia, sleeping pills and nighttime panic” — slow-rolls like a minimalist horror-movie score of footsteps, creaking floorboards and random piano noise. At least before the guitar tandem burst into nightmarish breakdown-mode.
QUOTE Watremez started Mirar as a solo project before Elfstedt approached the guitarist over Instagram to collab. Of his own stylistically groovy, neo-classical and noise-based beginnings, Watremez notes: “I fell in love with Slipknot’s first two albums when I was 11. Then I started playing music, but I wanted to play something other than metal. I studied musicology, and then I went to jazz school. But at the same time, I listened to a lot of Vildhjarta, then Humanity’s Last Breath, and I composed riffs in their style. I tried to imitate their sound.”
Pure Pleasure
RIYL Deftones, Hum, Narrow Head
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Charleston, South Carolina, post-hardcore band Pure Pleasure’s three-song, self-titled debut EP may be the most melodic release to have come out through upstart hometown label Limited Hangout this year, but their Hum-styled songscaping likewise lands loud as hell. Songs like “Counting Sheep” embody the quintet’s self-described “big amps and empty beer cans” aesthetic, while even the soft-sung anxieties of vocalist-guitarist Ryan Rucker reflect an internal screaming of the soul.
QUOTE “I think the main point behind all of these songs is about the unease of everyday things: trouble sleeping, staring at our phone too much, maintaining relationships. I think it’s an incredibly healthy thing to admit the follies of our ways,” guitarist Nate McKinley says, though on at least the last of those fronts, it sounds like Pure Pleasure are keeping plenty connected to their local scene. He adds: “Recently we all started a collective called Sugarcube, with plans to start an all ages space in town — a place our younger selves would have loved. Between that, the new label, and all the new music, there’s some cool things cooking around here.”
Stabbing
RIYL Suffocation, Cryptopsy, 200 Stab Wounds
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Since forming in 2021, Houston’s Stabbing have embedded themselves in the death-metal landscape through a furious blur of technical prowess and street-level slam-outs — all anchored by the ultra-septic gutturals of vocalist Bridget Lynch, a rising phenom who has even moonlighted outside of the band by filling in for Suffocation’s Ricky Myers at a few shows. Though the group are set to spend the summer playing shows with Kittie and 200 Stab Wounds, they’re also finishing up their first full-length through new label Century Media, with the band explaining to Revolver that their as-yet-untitled project has them working under the mantra of “more riffs, faster parts, groovier slams.”
QUOTE While Lynch’s bile-billowing vocals are defiantly pungent, to say the least, sometimes it’s the other members of Stabbing that get tasked with the dirty work when they’re out on the road. Guitarist Marvin Ruiz explains: “One time Bridget was running merch at a fest, and she somehow dropped the bag with all of the band money in a porta potty. I had to reach in and pull it out. It was fucked up.” He laughs. “Always get waterproof money bags is the lesson here, I guess!”