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 death metal, nu-core, street 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.
Wargasm – “70% Dead” With Corey Taylor
Having already collab’d with Fred Durst, U.K. duo Wargasm have teamed with yet another nu-metal icon, this time drafting Slipknot’s Corey Taylor into the electro-punk mania of their Carpe Diem-chaotic “70% Dead.”
Though the lengthy, tension-filled intro works together a feverish thrash-dustrial riff and insidious cheerleader-chant sloganeering, the threesome eventually shoot into overdrive once Sam Matlock, Milkie Way and Taylor start screaming of having to live their lives “on the barrel of loaded gun.”
They may not be here for a long time, and they’re already 70 percent dead, but damned if Wargasm aren’t still giving it their all on this delirious single.
LICE – “Prevention of Peace”
Brampton, Ontario, quintet LICE’s new World of Greed EP is a heavy-hitter across the board, but centerpiece “Prevention of Peace” might be its roughest-edged masterstroke.
LICE cram a ton into a just barely two-minute epic: a bit of East Coast two-step, ambient divebombs, pain-drilling accelerando, street-chunked punk. Shaye’s vocal overload, meanwhile, undulates from reverb chamber-decimating screams towards a razor-slash treatise seemingly warring with hypocrites whose values only exist when eyes are upon them.
156/Silence – “Better Written Villain”
Pittsburgh metalcore faction 156/Silence based their “Better Written Villain” on Animal Farm’s piggish Napoleon, one of fiction’s most enduring yet despicable authoritarian baddies.
As for the song itself, the veteran group apparently put the piece through numerous rewrites in the studio, but between its dark melodic edge, precision-judded grooves, and the ebb-and-flow between Jack Murray’s harrowed end-times screams and nu-croon, 156/Silence may have just penned an instant classic for their own canon.
NAILS – “Give Me the Painkiller”
The new NAILS era is on fire so far, with the second tease from the Oxnard-bred extremists’ Every Bridge Burning blazing a furious path via the twin-spindling of main man Todd Jones and new co-guitarist Shelby Lermo (Ulthar).
Spiced more so by D-beating proto-black metal than NAILS’ foundational grinding, “Give Me the Painkiller” is a vitriolic joyride that’s bound leave you sore in the morning — but pop a few Advil now and you’ll be just fine.
Escuela Grind – “Turbulence”
It’s hard to say if Escuela Grind would consider adding a grunge-style release to their existing run of genre-focused EPs, but the East Coast experimenters’ new single from forthcoming sophomore LP Dreams on Algorithms suggests that kind of a facelift could work well.
“Turbulence” features Katerina Economou’s first-ever clean vocals for the project, which sort of conjure Mike Patton wildly quipping over the evilest Alice in Chains riff. But then the band get back to their namesake grind with an intensely dissonant rebuke.
Vomit Forth – “Rotting Wool”
Vomit Forth keep things visceral with the first official preview of their upcoming Terrified of God LP, with “Rotting Wool” defiantly doling out septic scrape-and-squeal guitar sections, skin-sanding blasts and intestine-rumbling grooves. Though Kane Gelaznik briefly power-howls the song title in a breakdown, he otherwise revels in a vocal-cord-rupturing guttural splatter.
Proudly depraved — like throwing on your best-fitting cashmere sweater to spend the night gleefully rolling around a blood-slicked slaughterhouse.