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 progressive sludge, creeped-out mathcore, subversive 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.
The Callous Daoboys -“Watching Us Kiss”
The Callous Daoboys brought us in close and smooched our ears with a compelling creepy new tune called “Watching Us Kiss.”
While there are a few outlier flourishes, this one is a reasonably straightforward-yet-savage display of the Georgia outfit’s most metallic tendencies. The beats crunch hard and get progressively heavier, though both guitarist Maddie Cafrey and violinist Amber Christman inject the piece with some seriously screwy, strings-based sci-fi sounds.
Carson Pace howls things out for the cucks and lurkers in our midst. The video matches the voyeuristic vibes.
TURNSTILE – “BIRDS: DYING FETUS VERSION”
“I don’t know, but I believe/I found a song playing just for me.”
We’d been desperate to hear Dying Fetus’ extreme take on Turnstile’s “BIRDS” since the cover was announced as part of the latter’s NEVER ENOUGH: VERSIONS project earlier in the summer, but nothing could have prepared us for how audaciously weird and flat-out fucking awesome this actually is.
On the one hand, Dying Fetus definitely lean into their death-metal heritage for the redux, delivering toxic blasts and viciously trilled licks that speak to years of depraved musical activity. But they also manage to tap into the spirit of Brendan Yates’ gushing love letter to artistic expression, even if Dying Fetus vocalist-bassist John Gallagher is doing so through a guttural death rattle.
In This Moment – “I Want to Believe” Feat. Dayseeker
“Nothing will ever be the same.”
In This Moment vocalist Maria Brink is the focal point of her band’s new Witch album, to be clear, but she gracefully entwines with Dayseeker’s Rory Rodriguez to deliver the dark indigo moodiness of “I Want to Believe.”
Brink rises from pensive whispers to soaring cleans to a rapped-and-screamed bridge section. Rodriguez delivers complex, yearning emotivity (“I want to achieve so much more than you see”), and then they both wash over you amid a climax of detuned dramatics.
LESSER CARE – “Embrace”
Lesser Care are time-portaling us back to 1995 with their alt-rocking, shoegazing and distortion-smeared “Embrace,” the opening cut from the El Paso quintet’s Lincoln Leather EP.
Raw and dreamy in equal measures, its blend of darkened chromatic chunkery and cloud-gliding melodies comes across as “Hey Man, Nice Shot” for the Hum heads.
Mastodon – “Poisonous Weapons”
Mastodon’s Marrow Deep is an extra personal outing for the Georgia icons, a reflection on pain, death and a tragically transformative period — in part inspired by the passing of the band’s co-founding guitarist Brent Hinds.
Vocalist-bassist Troy Sanders and vocalist-drummer Brann Dailor whiplash through conflicted feelings, seemingly hinting at some of the inner strife they experienced through Hinds’ departure from the band (“Your failures are not my fault”) while also being clearly devastated over his death (“Calling your name/Holding a space in our hearts for you”).
Sonically, “Poisonous Weapons” levels into a familiar sludgy groove, but also wades into more melancholic and proggy sections. New guitarist Nick Johsnton delivers a limber-fingered, psyche-stirring solo. Their “Weapons” will leave a mark.
Polyphia – “POWER IN THE BLOOD”
Consecrate yourself in the wildly shreddy, super-funky flow of Polyphia’s “POWER IN THE BLOOD.”
As you may expect by now, Tim Henson and his cohorts bring tastefully wow-worth scale-crawls to the piece, though those guitar lines also get super chewy and processed throughout the piece — bending and squealing through a vibrant digitalia.
Henson has said that the group’s new album, BE NOT AFRAID, alternates between songs that are “very uplifting and triumphant” and tracks that are “spine-chilling and terrifying.” Judging by the positive feels of the melody, “POWER IN THE BLOOD” seems to stand in the former category. It’s a virtuosic thrill ride, either way.