Here at Revolver, we’re always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it’s a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in Māori groove metal, post-hardcore, deathcore and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ.
For your listening pleasure, we’ve also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.
Architects – “Blackhole”
At the top of Architects’ latest single, Sam Carter screams savagely of being “swallowed by the storm clouds” of an unnatural disaster. Sounds rough!
All of us at Revolver, meanwhile, were stoked on getting swept into the commanding destruction Carter and the rest of the U.K. metalcore favorites unleash on the second taste of their upcoming album, The Sky, The Earth & All Between.
Between “Blackhole” and first single “Whiplash,” it sounds like Architects are preparing the globe for an all-out beating in 2025.
Alien Weaponry – “Mau Moko”
New Zealand trio Alien Weaponry are back with a vengeance, with the first heavy preview of their forthcoming Te Rā collection cross-referencing earth-cratering grooves and break-neck percussive riffery with joyously revelatory Haka chanting.
Sung and growled in the te reo Māori language, “Mau Moko” is a metal-styled celebration of traditional Māori tattooing practices, while its music video centers around reclaiming ancestral remains from colonizers.
All told, Alien Weaponry are here for the culture, and so are we.
Psycho-Frame – “No Revives”
Hate clearly flows through the veins of deathcore menaces Psycho-Frame, who are in full-on execution mode throughout the impossibly brutal, tech-driven insanity of new murder anthem “No Revives.”
Its lethal adrenaline rush includes compound-fracture beatwork, manically tapped-out guitar attacks, and one pig bree that sounds like it’s fritzing out of a waterlogged Atari 2600 motherboard. At one point, new Canadian vocalist Colter Cuthbertson (also of Killing of a Sacred Deer, World of Pleasure and Serration) tells us to “eat a grenade.”
In short: They killed it here.
Initiate – “Too Much”
It’s been a long 21 months since Cali hardcore crew Initiate left us with their Cerebral Circus album, so the arrival of their melodically transformative “Too Much” single was one of the week’s big surprises.
While less chugged-and-bounced than their Circus music, “Too Much” still has vocalist Crystal Pak hollering hard throughout. Meanwhile, the tune’s acoustic-guitar-jangling section ever-briefly morphs Initiate into some kind of whimsical, post-hardcore version of the Sundays.
Is it too much to ask for another single ASAP?
Fox Lake – “Cold Hard Truth”
Here’s the cold, hard truth: Fox Lake’s new single is a total jam.
The Denver, Colorado, unit are flexing a few different approaches on this one — boastfully threat-loaded rap-rock vocals, cutting Nineties NYHC grooves and a surprisingly buttery production flip in the breakdown that might accidentally slot this into a lo-fi hip-hop study mix some day.
Fox Lake brag in-song that “this is everything you couldn’t be inside a waveform,” and you’d be hard-pressed to disprove their ambitious nature here.
Gates to Hell – “Next to Bleed”
Death Comes to All, per the title to Gates to Hell’s upcoming album, and the longtime Louisville, Kentucky, metalcore faction are more than willing to slice and dice you towards that inevitability with their positively chaotic new single, “Next to Bleed.”
Morbid-madness death riffs come flying off the fretboards in rapid succession, while the drums — courtesy of Trey Garris, younger brother of Knocked Loose’ Bryan Garris — threaten to derail themselves at any time, and Ryan Storey gets gross with his torturous storytelling.
A foul stench is in the air, though we’re taking in another whiff.