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 alt-spiked hardcore, grungy doom, death 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.
Blood Vulture – “Die Close: Finale”
Two Minutes to Midnight host Gwarsenio Hall (a.k.a. Jordan Olds) stripped off his corpsepaint to deliver this earnest and aching track with his Blood Vulture project, which released its debut album, Die Close, today.
The record’s melancholy-blasted closing cut brings to mind a splash of Type O, a bit of Alice in Chains and a touch of modern Cave In. The song channels the grief of loss, but revels in communal harmonies delivered by Cave In’s Stephen Brodsky, Baroness’ Gina Gleason, Lingua Ignota’s Kritin Hayter and more.
It’s affecting music video, portraying the final moments of a vampire blistering apart beneath sun beams, was inspired by Eighties horror flicks Near Dark and The Lost Boys. Despite the inspiration — or perhaps because of this — it doesn’t suck.
Bilmuri – “MORE THAN HATE”
There’s an exceptional kind of cognitive dissonance going on between Bilmuri’s new “More Than Hate” single and its accompanying music video — and it easily trumps the genre-splicer’s once unthinkable country-metalcore crossover.
On the one hand, the artist is delivering a heart-wrecked, pop-crooning recollection of a relationship gone wrong — albeit set against jack-hammered juds a-plenty. Then there’s the music video, where Bilmuri — portraying the mythical “HOGMAN” — is running around a forest in his underoos trying to evade a bunch of brawny hunting-show rejects.
The music and the visuals may not be a perfect match — we don’t hate it, though.
Higher Power – “All the Rage”
“Have I grown lately? Have I outgrown this mind?”
Higher Power are getting reflectively philosophical on their latest single, which was surprise-released today (June 26th) along with a whole damn album, their first in five years. And while we’re still fully processing the full breadth of the UK alt-hardcore wonders’ third full-length, one thing’s for sure: We haven’t outgrown our love for ‘em.
While fit with a fever-dream video that finds the band rocking out with eerily elongated, arguably impractical fingers, “All the Rage” locks into an undeniably hypnotic and sweetened post-hardcore groove. Vocalist Jimmy Wizard croons how he’s ready to start “living on the edge of every single moment.”
It’s an immediate earworm, and a bounce-forward highlight from their newly arrive There’s Love in This World If You Want It.
Sanguisugabogg – “Abhorrent Contraception” Feat. Defeated Sanity
Ohio death-metal miscreants Sanguisugabogg call their new song “a timeless classic… about the slaughter of an entire family and the unborn.” Devin Swank’s gutturals on the track are extreme in theme and execution, the vocalist getting extra wretched while listing how a “perfect housewife” ends up offing her husband and offspring, while Defeated Sanity’s Josh Welshman joins the fray. The video gorily follows suit.
Likewise not for the faint of heart are the song’s many extreme pivots, perhaps most noticeably a freakish mid-song riff deceleration juxtaposing itself against a warp-speed double-kick section.
The band have teased third LP, Hideous Aftermath, as their most brutal yet, and it’s certainly shaping up that way.
STARSET – “SILOS”
“You know we’re the walking dead/And we’re both undying.”
On the one hand, STARSET’s new single seems to be somewhat about humanity hiding in the shadows amid a dystopian rise of the machines. On the other side of things, the sci-fi-inspired outfit loudly rocket out the speakers with this latest standalone single.
Their “SILOS” — which finds STARSET joined by former As I Lay Dying guitarist Phil Sgrosso — is propelled by a fuselage of heavy drum grooving, but likewise presents a galaxy of shimmering synth tones, bombastically detuned-and-bittersweet guitar chording and sung-to-growled lines about “clutching for survival as our mechanical offspring roam the earth, merciless and free.”
Sun Dont Shine – “Coming Down”
There’s a new, four-song EP coming up soon from sludge supergroup Sun Dont Shine, and title track “Coming Down” is a certifiable crusher.
The song is a sad-rock juggernaut steered by multi-layered, bleakly beautiful vocal harmonies from vocalist-guitarist Kenny Hickey, and knocked out of the park by grandstandingly gloomy, back-to-back solos from the Type O Negative veteran and Crowbar/Down riff lord Kirk Windstein.
Hickey lays it out in-song that he’s going through a parasocial relationship problem (“You take and you take”). Despite this, we can’t be the only ones out here greedily demanding another dose of Sun Dont Shine ASAP.