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 throwback thrash to dystopian metalcore.
Chained Saint
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Metallica, Slayer, Testament
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE When teenage metalheads Chained Saint first started jamming in the 100-degree sweatbox that is their South Florida garage practice space, they were blazing through covers of the Big 4 and more. While they sometimes consider upgrading to “a nice rehearsal space with air conditioning,” the garage is home, and that’s where they ultimately cooked up the original, yet classically-savage-sounding thrash riffs of their debut album, Blindside.
Chained Saint were starstruck and tongue-tied when they met Mastodon guitarist Bill Kelliher while recording Blindside at his West End Sound studios in Atlanta, Georgia, but singer Sean Sterling got at least a few words in with Alice in Chains’ William DuVall, who helped produce the record and even screamed along with the young vocalist on “Stronger Than Stone (Blindside).”
QUOTE Chained Saint’s second show was near-catastrophic for both the band and their friends. Guitarist Ethan Kahn’s amp died the second they stepped onstage, which led him to sprint down the street to a nearby rehearsal space to rent a head with only seconds to spare. They managed to pull it off, but then during the performance they saw one of their friends soar through the air and put his head through a wall.
“He has a scar as a keepsake,” Sterling confirms. “He was supposed to be keeping an eye on our stuff, but ended up in the mosh pit.”
GORE.
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Spiritbox, Bad Omens, Jinjer
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Delivering a wide range of angelic melodies and hellacious howls on GORE.’s new single “Babylon,” vocalist Haley Roughton is the star of the show. Despite her day job as a Spacewalk engineer, the song’s lyrics turn to the heavens more than the cosmos as the singer explores questions of faith and “religious trauma.”
All that said, the personal-sacrifice-themed crusher from GORE.’s forthcoming pinch-squealed-and-djent-pressed A Bud That Never Blooms EP — their first release for Spinefarm Records — also showcases the Texas melodic metalcore trio’s fine instrumental prowess.
QUOTE While already fully submerged in the world of GORE., the “Babylon” video shoot also found Roughton covered in buckets of green slime and plunging her head into an aquarium tank of “holy water” to scream through some of the tune’s heaviest lines.
“I learned that singing underwater is way harder than it looks. I had to do everything in 15-30-second intervals — my neck hurt so badly afterwards, since the water weighed down my hair,” Roughton reports, though she adds that the actor who played the baptism-obsessed pastor was actually quite a conscientious scene partner. “In the shots where he had to pull my head out of the water, I would hear him say, ‘I’m really sorry, are you doing OK?’ behind me.”
Silly Goose
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Limp Bizkit, Papa Roach, P.O.D.
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Atlanta, Georgia, nu-metal rascals Silly Goose admit to having played their fair share of empty rooms when they first started out — and it sucked. So, the group took their energy-drink-guzzling grooves, irreverently “swaggarocious” verbal agility, and a generator out on the road to start staging a series of guerilla performances around North America, performing unsanctioned sets outside of venues and festival grounds, in gas station parking lots, and even inside the occasional fast-food restaurant. And that’s when the crowds started flocking to Silly Goose.
If you’re down with a lil’ bit of chaos and some playful “bad behavior” (notably the title of their upcoming EP), Silly Goose note that they’re inviting “every single person to join us in a rap-rock revolution.” Just don’t tell the cops where the show is.
QUOTE “It’s fun when we’re able to shut down a whole gas station, or block off a whole street, or do something that we know is not supposed to be happening. The whole time we’re performing, we’re looking over our shoulder… a lot of these shows end with the cops giving us a hard time,” vocalist Jackson Foster admits.
Who cares if Silly Goose’s technically illegal street shows have the authorities up in arms, though — their music is clearly for the people. Foster explains: “While we were playing [outside of] Lollapalooza, this homeless dude climbed up the hood of our van and then he jumped off the roof. That was pretty badass of him!”
Allt
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Gojira, Silent Planet, Invent Animate
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Like a lot of the best post-apocalyptic fiction, Swedish outfit Allt’s forthcoming From the New World looks at the literal and societal ruin of our surroundings, contemplates what the hell went wrong, and tries to figure out where we go from here.
The hard-hitting, progressively metal-bent bleakness of songs like “Aquila” and “Emanate” look to the stars for some of those answers, reflecting the band’s love for dystopian sci-fi, cosmic philosophy, and hope of connecting with something beyond our planet before Earth officially goes supernova. Fittingly enough, album writing sessions at a remote house in the Scandinavian woods sometimes made Allt feel like they “were the last humans left in a world gone cold.”
QUOTE “I would hope that if Allt’s music were to encounter an alien culture, they’d have advanced enough socially, morally and empathetically to distinguish our civilization’s fiction from reality,” guitarist Olle Nordström says in relation to the situational darkness present on his band’s New World.
Somewhat second-guessing the proposition of their brutally beautiful album making first contact, he adds: “Actually, now that I think about it, I’d really prefer if an alien civilization didn’t have its first encounter with our music — something like Sigur Rós, Pink Floyd or the Beatles would probably be far safer.”
Deadlands
RECOMMENDED IF YOU LIKE Bring Me the Horizon, Motionless in White, Wage War
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Though Long Island, New York, metalcore trio Deadlands have spent the past few years refining a blur of battering ram breakdowns and dark violet chorus singalongs — yielding millions of EP and single streams along the way — frontwoman Kasey Karlsen has also been upping her vocal game while covering the likes of Ice Nine Kills and Bring Me the Horizon for her popular YouTube channel, and likewise keeps in shape by delivering staggering cleans and screams while singing for shredder Nita Strauss.
Deadlands’ newly released “Villains” single is part of an in-the-works song cycle based on the seven deadly sins, where Karlsen is dreaming up the most revoltingly toxic characters imaginable — that is, if she hasn’t already come across them online.
QUOTE “At its core, social media is putting you in the direct line of fire for public opinion. You have to have a thick skin,” Karlsen explains. “People will talk trash just to make themselves seem like they have something important to say. Truthfully, I’ve heard it all: I suck. women don’t belong in metal, delete your socials. And that’s surface-level stuff!
“I’ve realized over the years that I’m not here to please anyone. Deadlands creates art because we as musicians channel our lives, experiences and emotions through our songs. If you appreciate our way to express that, we appreciate you. If you don’t, we don’t care.”