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 hardcore, rap-rock, 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.
Deadlands – “Villain”
They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but Long Island trio Deadlands’ new single is a fiery reversal of that maxim.
Scream-heavy vocalist Kasey Karlsen (who you might have seen in one of her viral videos or on tour with shredder Nita Strauss) begins the song berating the “transgressions” of the titular cold-hearted, snake-like villain, but ultimately flips the script by turning up the temperature with a retaliatory attack (“I’ll slice and dice until you say quit”),
The rest of the band complements their singer’s fury with a mix of panic-djented breakdowns and detuned, yet pop-world-broaching, chorus melodies.
The Black Dahlia Murder – “Mammoth’s Hand”
Weirdly enough, both previews from the Black Dahlia Murder’s forthcoming Servitude album concern cannibalism — with the latest, “Mammoth’s Hand,” finding vocalist Brian Eschbach screeching about a horde of hungry warriors riding into a neighboring village to feast upon the flesh of their foes.
Beyond the grisly theme, the band are making a tasty meal of their femur-crushing grooves and impeccably seasoned shred leads. Though the song and video take place in a snowy tundra, TBDM are serving this one up piping hot with fall-off-the-bone freshness.
VCTMS – “snuff.tape” Feat. Marc Zelli
You know, we wouldn’t normally steer you towards an underground snuff tape, but it’s hard to ignore the impressive series of kill-shots VCTMS put on display through their latest single.
A pervading sense of dread creeps in immediately through a fuzz-corroded slow-groove, but the song gets even grosser the further it goes along. Credit that to the menacing death rattles coming out of both VCTMS and guest vocalist Marc Zelli (of Paleface Swiss), a triplet-paced trap-metal climax, and an extra eerie audio concrete snippet of a killer’s confession.
Locked Shut – “Toothache”
If you’ve ever been woken up in the middle of the night by a throbbing molar, you know that pain goes hard. Kind of like “Toothache,” the aptly-titled second preview from Midwest quintet Locked Shut’s forthcoming album, The New Chaos.
It’s a fast-and-furious banger that blasts by as if powered by a fully-charged water flosser, with plenty of pun-based, post-dental-school-styled scorning over a rotted-out relationship that needs to get yanked out by the root. Paradoxically both foul-mouthed and minty fresh, “Toothache” is another pre-release win from the Missouri Colgate crew.
Unprocessed – “Sacrifice Me”
For this surprise single, German metal veterans Unprocessed dove deep into a dark but achingly beautiful arrangement. The second we started this up, we were chasing them straight into that same abyss.
“Sacrifice Me” delivers big on multiple fronts: Polyphia-adjacent natural-harmonic-tapping melodies, beats that are both skeleton-quaking and freakishly octopus-armed, an outright jaw-dropping vocal clinic from Manuel Gardner Fernandes that flexes tremor-vibrato vulnerability and anvil-heavy howling.
Funnily enough, this song also has a line about offering up one’s flesh to a cannibal. Maybe don’t tell the Black Dahlia Murder.
Silly Goose – “Tsunami”
While there’s no doubt that Silly Goose’s “swaggarious” style is 100 percent indebted to the backwards-baseball-hat blueprint of Limp Bizkit’s Significant Other era, the younger band are nevertheless having a lot of fun fudging with the nu-metal formula.
“Tsunami” is a whirling dervish of thick-skulled rap-rock riffs and joke-loaded, smarmy one-liners that land equally braggy and self-deprecating — kind of like the best Fred Durst lines, now that we’re thinking about it. Self-aware without being self-serious, Silly Goose are owning their goofiness, and we’re flocking straight towards it, too.