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 Swedish melodeath, video-game-inspired nu-metal, motivational post-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.
At the Gates – “Black Hole Emission”
For Tompa.
Top to bottom, At the Gates’ The Ghost of a Future Dead is a staggering accomplishment for the melodeath vets, but it’s also an emotionally conflicted moment in their storied career — while it marks the band’s first record with lead guitarist Anders Björler since 2014, it’s likewise their last with vocalist Tomas Lindberg, who passed away last fall after a prolonged battle with cancer.
The iconic death-metal vocalist alludes to his fate on the record’s concluding “Black Hole Emission” while addressing life’s “cancerous,” “inescapable madness.” But he thrusts his all into this final performance, as do the band with their emotionally-loaded and speed-barrier-breaking rip into the classic Gothenburg sound.
Boundaries – “Death will follow me”
Boundaries are on the verge of “absolute collapse” on “Death will follow me,” the Connecticut metalcore quintet dangling dangerously over the edge and set to tumble towards an existential void while contemplating the haphazard nature of mortality.
It’s a grief-stricken piece where full-steam D-beats, ground-cracking Subs, noise-wrecked beatdowns and scarred-psyche screaming generally run amok across its runtime. A sliver of hope arrives with a melodious background vocal in the chorus, yet Boundaries don’t offer easy solutions to their collective trauma.
Sometimes you need to sit with the pain before finding the way the out.
Holy Wars – “Kill the Light”
“I have given every life into the light.”
While Holy Wars fully throw themselves into their all-banger Shadow Work/Light Work LP, we’re putting the shine on the new “Kill the Light” single as one of their best yet.
It’s a pace-quickening, rock-and-djent-intensified anthem full of gnarled guitar hooks, fast-clapping percussion and hyper-sweet vocal layering, Kat Leon unraveling dread through pop-punky vocal hooks and a killer scream — albeit kinda mixed off-in-the-distance with the latter.
Invent Animate – “Fall Like Rain”
“I wasn’t born to be afraid.”
Let Invent Animate’s dark-gilded and damned ground-slapping new song wash over you. Their “Fall Like Rain” floods the senses with thunderous kick work, tsunami waves of gargantuan thall judding, and a “swarming blood red cloud” of moody atmospherics.
Though Marcus Vik screams of crying through lucid tears within a surrealist dreamscape (“sing me to sleep”), “Fall Like Rain” is cause for celebration, not sorrow.
Korn – “Reward the Scars”
This week you can have a surprise Korn song as a treat.
Unexpected but welcome as hell, the Bakersfield, California, legends lock in heavy for a new track inspired by the Diablo IV: Lord of Hatred expansion pack. It’s devilishly divine, a fiery performance full of underworld grooves and quest-driven introspection from Jonathan Davis (“Help me free the ones I saved/I can’t walk the path that’s laid”).
Still no hard news on the ETA of their next album, but Korn’s first song in four years delivers big in the meantime.
Quicksand – “Get to It”
Quicksand unstick themselves from the grind of life to deliver a positive-spirited, anti-procrastination anthem that ranks with the best of their sterling catalog.
“Get to It” bounds into action with lean but purposeful riffs and rhythms, this inspiring vocalist-guitarist Walter Schreifels to push past negative thoughts (“Acting like someone’s always standing in your way”) in order to seize the day.
It doesn’t take a mind reader to know we’re looking forward to the rest of their Bring On the Psychics LP.