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 frostbitten hardcore, country-fried alt-rock, Napalm Death-assisted post-punk 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.
Bilmuri – “TWICE”
Some of us at Revolver thought it couldn’t get much better than Bilmuri’s recent country-breakdown-crazed “HARD2TELL” single — but then Johnny Franck rolled up on a mud-caked riding mower, yelled out, “Hold my hog!” and proceeded to drop another genre-blending beauty.
“TWICE” begins with a monstrous metal groove, but almost instantly launches itself towards heart-wrecked lyricism and a HAIM-ish swing beat. Then it toots its own horn with hot-and-bothered sax steaminess and a headbanging micro-blast.
While pulled from the upcoming LP KINDA HARD, “TWICE” melted our minds.
Feral Nature – “Cradle of Twigs & Bone”
Oslo, Norway, hardcore group Feral Nature recently described their Cradle of Twigs & Bone EP as “a marriage of the truly disgusting and tragically beautiful things in our world,” and we get it.
On the one hand, the first half of its stellar title cut sports elementally nasty doom riffage, femur-decimating rhythms and a mercilessly incensed blur of screeches from vocal powerhouse Selma Bahner. It briefly baits and switches listeners with a bittersweet, echo-heavy guitar melody, but then Feral Nature pull us back into the madness with a conclusive roar of sound.
While it’s bleaker than it is beatific, it stuns no matter what.
Flatwounds – “Emulator”
New York grunge-core quartet Flatwounds are ready to establish a new “chain of command,” per the title of their next EP, and they’re asserting their dominance with the record’s opening rockout, “Emulator”.
The song is full of wah-incensed riffs and Snapcase-nostalgic rhythms. Above the energetic melee, Colin O’Hare leans into raspy, sarcastic and situationally juxtapositional lines about someone living their life on autopilot (“I carry a lack of wisdom with everything I touch”).
The band described their next release as “a little weird, dissonant, melodic, and heavy when it needs to be.” We think that’ll do just fine.
FOTOCRIME – ” Unthinkable”
It’s not that FOTOCRIME — the longtime project of Coliseum’s Ryan Patterson — are marching to a different beat, exactly, but there is a literal change of pace with the band’s new single, “Unthinkable,” in that former Slipknot drummer and budding solo artist Jay Weinberg is slamming the tubs behind them.
Lean, anthemic bursts of dark punk guitar and synth-phonic embellishments from producer and Jawbox member J. Robbins surge beneath Patterson’s post-dystopian reporting on a “cult of violence” and the daily deceptions we face (“The unthinkable is here/The unknowable has appeared”).
Napalm Death’s Barney Greenway’s guest growls add some more scorn to the situation.
Nailed Shut – “Heaven Below Earth”
“Shut up and listen to this evil ass guitar riff.”
Massachusetts metalcore group Nailed Shut called it with that sassy lil’ quip from an Instagram reel hyping the first fierce and freaky taste of this spring’s a promise made, a promise kept. Then again, are they sure there’s just one?
“Heaven Below Earth” spirals into chaos from the jump, with frantic drum slaps and demonic guitar noise complementing Asher Thomas’ narrative hellscapes on “prematurely torqued orifices” and being dragged deep beneath the soil.
A grimy, grotesque and goddamn great preview of what’s to come.
Puscifer – “A Public Stoning”
Puscifer’s Normal Isn’t is one of the year’s most anticipated releases — our readers told us as much a couple of weeks ago, and we wholeheartedly agreed. So, it’d seem more fit to give Maynard James Keenan and Co. their flowers over the record’s “A Public Stoning” than a titularly-minded pelting.
Nevertheless, as one of the album’s heaviest and hardest-hitting outings, listeners get a right drubbing on the drum front. The bass runs eerie and often fuzz-fried. Keenan and Carina Round link up for sternly-sung lines about “single-minded muggle smugglers” too stubborn and proud to escape their echo chambers. Round likewise adds unsettling coos and cries before the team takes us through a synth-swerved and dancy finale.