Chevelle – “Rabbit Hole (Cowards, Pt. 1)”
Following a four-year drought, alt-metal brother band Chevelle are back with new music. We eagerly plunged right into their “Rabbit Hole” and promptly got smacked in the face with a series of effects-rooted guitar riffs and simply-stated yet gargantuanly stomping drums.
Through all that, Pete Loeffler’s determinedly power-howling about the “conspiracy addicts” trying to catfish the government and how he’s showing no quarter over their tomfoolery (“Don’t give them an inch.”).
It’s a rhythm-fortified first preview of their impending 10th album, and we’re psyched to hear part two of the rollout.
Evanescence – “Afterlife”
22 years ago, Evanescence were determined in bringing us to life. Through these darker days, and to help launch the forthcoming Netflix anime Devil May Cry, Evanescence are now exploring what’s going on in the “Afterlife.”
All told, Evanescence’s latest track — which arrives alongside news that Amy Lee and Co. are “deeply in the creative process” of making their next album — is a suitably brooding yet bombastic companion piece to a series all about slicing, dicing and shooting demons on the regular.
Volumes – “Sidewinder”
Say hello to an extremely bitter Volumes.
More than two years on from the L.A. metalcore group’s last single, they’ve returned with a stereophonically speaker-bouncing juggernaut of blackhearted djent riffs and sneeringly screamed-out grievances over the slipperiest, sneakiest snakes in our midst.
Paired with an artistically bleak visualizer of nuclear explosions, burning fields and zeppelin crashes, it seems like Volumes have entered their scorched-earth period.
Employed to Serve – “Breaks Me Down”
“Sometimes it’s just hard to breathe.”
This is Justine Jones pushing her diaphragm to the extreme shortly before the chorus of UK metal unit Employed to Serve’s latest Fallen Star single. And you know what? We at Revolver agree, because right now “Breaks Me Down” is taking our collective breath away.
The track finesses its front end with Eighties-era fantasy-flick synths and a calm-and-collected vocal from guitarist Sammy Urwin, though the band soon hurl themselves back and forth between that iridescent gentleness and a grotesque staccato heaviness.
Invent Animate x Silent Planet – “Armageddon Eyes”
Maybe the end of the world won’t be so bad, at least if it arrives scored by the tag-team heaviness of metalcore experimentalists Invent Animate and Silent Planet, who formally unleashed their collaborative Bloom in Heaven EP today.
Though “Armageddon Eyes” begins with the briefest of chill-mode piano intros, the composite wrecking crew quickly run through molten blast sections hotter than the earth’s core, while also specializing in progressively finger-snapping riffs galore and sincere yet super-scratchy vocal sections.
The blooming made them whole, as “Armageddon Eyes” elevates both bands to a whole new level of sonic intrigue.
Amira Elfeky – “My Forever Overdose”
Honestly, we’ve surrendered ourselves to the sounds of all six songs on Amira Elfeky’s just-released sophomore EP, Surrender, but there’s something especially bewitching about the record’s balladesque nu-gaze anthem “My Forever Overdose” that’s got us coming in quick for another fix.
While the track plays close to the Evanescence-esque side of Elfeky’s songcraft — with her doomed romance lyricism fitting that vibe quite well — the groove-bombed mid-section song also pits dark-and-detuned djentage against the solo artist’s fiercest screams yet.
We’ll take more of this, please.