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 through the winter holiday break in deathcore, screamo, melodic hardcore 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.
Saetia – “Tendrils”
Saetia weren’t sure if they were going to make new music in their reunion phase — which officially began in late 2022 — but we’re damn glad the late-Nineties cult screamo unit gave things another go via the lush, gorgeous and sometimes chaotic “Tendrils,” the title track to their forthcoming EP.
The song is initially driven by a hypnotically rapid cascade of bass notes, but ramps up towards a punchy micro-breakdown and then closes out with a subtle kind of melancholy. “I’ve become a worse version of myself,” Billy Werner cries at one point, referencing some in-song drama, but all told, the Saetia of the 21st century sound pretty great so far.
Thursday – “Taking Inventory of a Frozen Lake”
“It’s getting cold.”
Geoff Rickly’s heart is apparently all iced-up these days, per his plaintive croon on Thursday’s “Taking Inventory of a Frozen Lake,” but damned if the New Jersey singer and the rest of the band didn’t warm us to our core with their New Year’s Day single.
The track arrives at the time of year where a lot of us get wistful and reflective, and accordingly Rickly is parsing through thoughts on both past mistakes and a fading future, while also trying to understand what he sees in the mirror these days — all this above a throwback-y post-hardcore emotiveness akin to the group’s classic Full Collapse period.
From a Second Story Window – “Lowest”
If the lyrics are to be believed, From a Second Story Window’s positively furious single “Lowest” has the band walking a “cursed path,” but the new song — their first with Aughts-era vocalist Sean Vandegrift on the mic since he re-entered the fold last fall — suggests things are looking up for the Ohio crushers.
Just shy of two-minutes, “Lowest” presents a brutal blur of gnarly blasts, an eight-magnitude stomp-out section and foreboding, apocalyptic shrieks about unfortunate souls being tossed on the pyre.
Even at their “Lowest,” the veteran From a Second Story Window are taking their metalcore to new aggressive heights.
Fleshwater – “Standalone”
Fleshwater — the Deftones-approved side project from members of Vein.fm and MIRSY — literally said “Goodbye” to 2024 within the one-word intro to their barely minute-long “Standalone,” their sole piece of original music last year (to be fair, it also arrived on streamers last week alongside a live version of their “What the F#%! Was Said.”)
While brief, it’s still a pretty sick post-hardcore bound where the riffs run raging, the beats concave the soul, and Marisa Shirar lays out the band’s defiantly independent M.O.: “We are not here to be loved.”
Paleface Swiss – “River of Sorrows”
Paleface Swiss’ new CURSED album crams a lot into its sub-half-hour runtime — from disgustingly dialed-in metalcore (“Hatred”) to a trap-metal track targeting terminally online alpha males (“Enough?”) to its brooding and mostly clean-sung closing nu-ballad (“River of Sorrows”).
With respect to the latter, vocalist Marc “Zelli” Zellweger initially hits the track with a confident, cool-headed sensitivity (arguably the kind of thing the “haters” on “Enough?” are ragging on him for in the comments section), but he does heave his chest through a heavy mid-section. The rest of the band’s dark-gilded melodicism keeps the song afloat, too.
Stick to Your Guns – “Keep Planting Flowers”
Though we’re still a week out from the release of Orange County hardcore band Stick to Your Guns’ eight full-length, the title track to their Keep Planting Flowers just blossomed onto YouTube ahead of time (the track hits streamers with the rest of the record next week).
The song is melodic yet mournful, beginning with a few echo-spaced guitar chords and heart-pained screams from vocalist Jesse Barnett, but soon rises up towards soaring octave runs and fast-papping drum fills.
Keeping things on-brand, we’re giving Stick to Your Guns their flowers over this one.