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 depressive djent-pop, beastly Kawaii-metal, frenetic nu-core 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.
Static Dress – “face.”
A persistently melting clock possibly pulled from Dali’s personal collection. An exhibit of expressionless plastic masks. A drinking bird toy perpetually headbanging to the sounds of Static Dress. These are just some of the semi-random-but-possibly-symbolic pieces of ephemera scattered throughout the music video for “face.,” a somewhat cryptic clip presented across vibrantly retina-burning backdrops of red and blue.
Static Dress’ new single is a touch more direct, harnessing the gain-surged and heavy-hearted emo-ishness of an early Thursday cut (perhaps even Easter Egging this with a lyric about a love playing out like a “car crash”).
Buckle up, lest you’re willing to burst upon impact.
Volbeat – “In the Barn of the Goat Giving Birth to Satan’s Spawn in a Dying World of Doom”
Before we get into the sound of Volbeat’s new single, can we just take a beat to appreciate how deliciously gonzo that song title is?
Seemingly branded by a pentagram-shaped iron, and tailor-made to raise your horns to, the Danish outfit’s hellbilly jamboree about the birth of the spawn of Satan is a damned entertaining barnburner possessed by western jangling, double-barreled metal chugging and Michael Poulsen’s mock-Man-in-Black vibrato (“I walk the line/I walk the night”).
Fit with a music video full of ditch-digging scenes, skull-adorning ceremonies and the ensuing scorched-earth results, the song only becomes more engagingly apocalyptic as it goes on.
Tallah – “What we know”
It’s time to explore vast alien worlds with Tallah.
“What we know” is the nu-core outfit’s wildly energetic first single from their upcoming Primeval: Obsession // Detachment, a concept record reportedly about a pair of space travelers and their morals-challenging experience on an alien planet. As for the song, it hurtles through the cosmos while pinging off an asteroid field of Mudvayne-esque bass zaniness, Korn-leaning unease and a back-to-back solo section that zooms from effects-broken screechiness towards a hot-blooded shredfest.
We’re caught in a sonic spiral that’s twirling us down, but Tallah seemed primed to stick the landing.
BABYMETAL and Poppy – “from me to u”
“Let’s go!”
BABYMETAL’s first official single behind their upcoming and collab-heavy Metal Forth album was delivered from them to us this week, and it’s a riotous preview of what’s to come. From its glitchy breakbeats, to its monstrously low-slung melodies, to the beast-from-within guest spot from Poppy, and up into the absurdly cheerful last-minute key change, “from me to u” is a sensory overload that will not rest ‘til we’re breathless.
The music video, which finds Poppy transforming into a rage-intensified CGI demon wreaking havoc around BABYMETAL’s choreography routine, is likewise a stunner.
Bleeding From Within – “Violent Nature”
“We’re all just dying to feel something real.”
Bleed From Within vocalist Scott Kennedy nails it with this desperately howled-out admission on the first track of his band’s just-released ZENITH LP. And truth be told, it’s done over one of the rawest and most tangibly domineering metal cuts we’ve heard this week.
While Kennedy casts himself and some anonymous cohorts as “agents of chaos” in this reality-questioning cut, Bleed From Within deliver a brutally dialed-in, mercury-spurting performance on this in-the-red ass-whipper. No illusion, here — just honest-to-goodness metalcore severity of the highest order.
Sleep Token – “Caramel”
It does not sound like all is goin’ good in the garden for Vessel these days.
Sure, Sleep Token’s new “Caramel” initially has him singing all lovely-like atop the sounds of a tranquil brass cylinder melody and a feel-good Latin rhythm, but Vessel is also pouring out his soul with each syllable. He seems to be weighing in on the “beautiful nightmare” of fame, which includes hot gossip cycles and people forever trying to dox him and his semi-anonymous masked cohorts (“It’s getting harder even just to exhale”). That we’re pondering this out loud can’t be helping his anxieties, either.
In classic Sleep Token fashion, “Caramel” eventually rises up towards a doom-dirging djent sesh full of tortured-soul screaming. It all makes for a nakedly heavy and heartbreaking offering from Sleep Token — and a bittersweet taste of their hotly anticipated new album, Even in Arcadia.