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 metalcore, death rock, black metal 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.
Black Veil Brides – “Certainty”
“I’m not the saviour you thought I’d be.”
Black Veil Brides vocalist Andy Biersack said that his band’s first single of the year, which precedes a yet-to-be-detailed new album, centers itself on the dangers of unbending pride and “how rigid belief systems can become prisons of our own making.”
The song itself presents BVB’s penchant for merging battering breakdowns with melodious, anthemic choruses. It’s sure to inspire worship within BVB’s mighty fanbase, and we’re keeping the faith that more new music is on the way soon.
Distant – “Nothing Left to Hate”
There’s plenty to love about “Nothing Left to Hate.”
Dutch deathcore outfit Distant go for the throat with a steely, slam-driven single full of exquisitely inky grooves and harmonized pinch squeals that soar through the air like a squadron of bloody-thirsty barn owls.
Wrapped in metaphorical chains, vocalist Alan Gnja bellows through personal-failures-focused lyrics in which he explains he’s dragging the ghosts of every past self around like he’s Jacob fucking Marley.
Bitter Branches – “Cave Dwellers”
“I’m no better than you. But you’re worse than most.”
Famously agitated hardcore vocalist Tim Singer seethed in spectacular fashion last year on Deadguy’s reunion album, Near-Death Travel Services. This week he popped up with new music from his Bitter Branches project, which also features members of Paint it Black and Walleye, and sure enough, he’s as pointed and rage-driven as ever.
“Cave Dwellers” sports a bit of somber melodicism in its bass line, courtesy of Paint it Black/Lifetime vet Dan Yemin, but the track is generally driven by a noise-rocking pace and Singer’s anxious screams regarding divisive political tribalism and a primal urge to hate.
Final Gasp – “The Apparition”
Hardcore-coded death-rock outfit Final Gasp just rematerialized to announce their first album in three years, New Day Symptoms, and hooky-and-heavy lead single “The Apparition” has been haunting our thoughts all week.
Swimming in a pool of guitar effects, serving up metal-edged cymbal stops, briefly reveling in near-black-metal-styled tremolo picking in the back end, and coalescing around Jake Murphy’s gothic thoughts on death, sorrow and fading memories (“I don’t want to see your face/Falling out of place”), “The Apparition” sounds like a Mission UK anthem got dropped into an epic push-pit. And it’s got us gasping.
HANABIE. – “ICONIC”
“Don’t be a boring girl.”
If you’re bold enough to proclaim that both you and your new song are iconic — as HANABIE. do with their latest slice of hyperactive, boundaryless “Harajuku-core” — you’d best bring the goods. Fortunately, the track finds the band as feverishly manic and energetic as ever.
Cross-pollinating brawny nu-hooks with death-screams, Super Mario coin sounds, electronics-surging house rhythms and a pop-friendly chorus, “Iconic” serves up the twists a mile a millisecond.
Mayhem – “Life Is a Corpse You Drag”
Per Mayhem vocalist Attila Csihar’s grisly cries on “Life is a Corpse You Drag” — the latest intense single from the black-metal legends’ upcoming Liturgy of Death — we’re all but one step away from true freedom, and that “eternity cracks open” into something splendiferous once we die.
Bleak, on a certain level, but he also noted in a statement that this realization can lead one to “movement without fear, presence without compromise, [and] a victorious march into the final destruction.” This arguably conjures the relentless, blast-attacked feel of the new tune, too.