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 veteran nu-metal, grungy alt-punk, spiraling djent-jazz fusion 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.
Asymmetric Universe – “Reaction – Overthrow” feat. Jared Lee
That Asymmetric Universe guitarist Federico Vese and his bass-playing brother, Nicolò, once had jobs providing music for Italian theme parks makes a hell of a lot of sense — the pair’s light-spirited, but wildly arrangement-contorting and jarringly chugged-out approach to djent throws you through more loops than a weekend pass at Six Flags.
“Reaction – Ovethrow” might be the all-out heaviest song on their newly-released A Memory and What Came After album, the virtuosic Veses smoothing out most of their Nineties jazz-fusion feel to focus on high-gain, low-tuned tech-dexterity. And then saxophonist Jared Yee clacks through a twisted colossus of a guest solo to wind us out of this rollercoaster.
It’s a dizzying ride, to say the least.
Die Spitz – “Punishers”
Die Spitz’ “Punishers” single, the latest behind their upcoming album, Something to Consume, is a hypnotically pedal-blaring, thick-chorded alt-punk anthem — a little more grunge and less metal than last month’s doom-swung “Throw Yourself to the Sword,” but, to us, it still swirls in all the right ways.
The video merges folk horror with revenge flick aesthetics and a meta mindfuck of a scene where a forlorn barnyard mime wanders into a Die Spitz video shoot on a neighboring farm, beats the shit out their singer, and usurps her place on the mic. The rest of Die Spitz are all too chill about the punishment being doled out on-camera.
Mudvayne – “HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE”
This one hurts so good.
After a 16-year drought, Mudvayne finally re-tapped their nu-metal essence to deliver “HURT PEOPLE HURT PEOPLE” — a therapy-speak heavy anthem vocalist Chad Gray says had been kicking around for a few years, but finally primal-screamed its way onto streamers this week.
The song is a to-the-point banger with a bit of familiarly thwonky bass work and a percussively punishing one-chord chorus. Gray suggests with a soul-wounded scream that “the price of admission is suffering,” but the arrival of new Mudvayne music more likely spiraled the fanbase into a state of euphoric headbanging.
Soulfly – “Storm the Gates”
To paraphrase “Storm the Gates,” Max Cavalera might’ve fulfilled the prophecy long ago, through — at the very least— the globe-dominating thrash of classic Sepultura, and the groove-bombed slam he’s been heaving with Soulfly since the late Nineties.
And yet, there’s an intense feeling of energy and urgency snapping through the veteran metalmaker’s latest call to action, a defiantly propulsive protest song full of wah-mangled guitars, tribal drum accents and Cavalera’s unflinching desire for us to band together and upend the powers forever trying to keep us down.
It’s a heavy rally anthem, one that throws back to Soulfly’s nu-metal roots, as Cavalera has been promising to do.
Spite – “LIGHTS OUT”
“The answer is violence.”
California metal degenerates Spite got ultra-nasty this week whilst debuting “LIGHTS OUT,” the gargantuan, Lamb of God-esque lead single from their upcoming NEW WORLD KILLER album. If the set-up on both titles wasn’t clear enough, Spite intend to do you some serious hurt.
Guts-stomping grooves. Vicious gutturals. Loose gravel-hurling guitar lines. A NSFW video where the band cut down their fervent followers with multiple rounds of gunfire. Spite are on a rampage, but we’re here for the carnage.
TX2 – “FEED” feat. DeathbyRomy
If you know anything about TX2 and DeathbyRomy, it pretty much goes without saying that their new collab would be an over-the-top toxic love song. The modern pop-metal banger weaves plenty of arachnid-alluding wordplay into the arrangement, with the narrative finding TX2 paralyzed in ecstatic anticipation of the kiss of the spider-woman (“I wanna feel your fangs”), despite knowing it’s going to kill them in the end.
Fittingly, the song itself — with its seductive hook and hypnotic nu-dustrial grooves — is too damn catchy to escape. It’s smooth as silk, even as it packs a venomous bite.