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 nu-metal, deathcore, screamo 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.
Bad Omens – “Impose”
“In your head I’m always gonna stay.”
Bad Omens’ second single of the summer takes on an inkier aesthetic than last month’s bleak and banging “Specter.” Indeed, despite its all-twitch drum-and-bass breakbeat, “Impose” is built around airy piano melodies and gently reverse-reverberated production spangles.
The heaviness arrives through the juxtapositional whispers of Noah Sebastian, here vibing above the cloud-soft club music experiment with trauma-wrecked musings on being lost in one’s thoughts and feeling the need to escape “a prison made of bone.”
We won’t be mad if this one sticks inside our skulls a little longer.
HEALTH – “ORDINARY LOSS”
Industrial titans HEALTH are back with a bold and booming but also bittersweet new single, and their “ORDINARY LOSS” is an extraordinary gain for our playlists.
Against magnetic metal chunkery and a pulse-quickening triplet swing, Jacob Duzsik coos out existential thoughts on the cyclical nature of life, death and sadness (“They’re here and then they’re gone”). The pain is felt especially deeply in the scream-powered backend of “ORDINARY LOSS,” which previews HEALTH’s forthcoming CONFLICT DLC album.
Kublai Khan TX – “The Mountain of Corsicana”
When Kublai Khan TX dropped new standalone single “The Mountain of Corsicana” earlier this week, a lot of online chatter revolved around whether any hilly ranges even existed in the titular Texas city. Matt Honeycutt clarified that he’s shouting out — and, boy, do we mean shouting — his late great uncle and father figure, a larger-than-life character buried in Corsicana (“Bow before the mountain/Where the body lies so still”).
Rather than get bogged down in semantics, crank the song up and enjoy the hammering metalcore heaviness — an awe-inspiring sonic vista of skull-rattling screams, detuned-and-damaged guitar work and a furiously kicked drum beat primed to flatten the earth with unmatched intensity.
Limp Bizkit – “Making Love to Morgan Wallen”
While arriving under one of the most WTF-inducing song titles of recent memory — Fred Durst also confirms in the breakdown that the in-song pumping takes place in an elevator, Aerosmith-style — “Making Love to Morgan Wallen” locks into a classic Bizkit beatdown of nu-crunching grooves and smart-alecky rhymes.
Beyond referencing the titular country star, Durst sends a tender non-sequitur out to Linkin Park’s Chester Bennington (“Damn, I miss you Chester/Sending love from my bass compressor”) and reps multiple David Bowie references. He also calls himself the “greatest motherfucker that you ever hated,” but truth is fans will find a lot to love about the much-anticipated track, their first in four years.
To put it Fred’s way: “Bizkit drops, the place explodes.”
Lorna Shore – “Glenwood”
“Glenwood” might not be the most traditionally heavy song on Lorna Shore’s new album, I Feel the Everblack Festering Within Me — but the theme of the cut might be the record’s most gutting.
Vocalist Will Ramos explained that the tune was inspired by a contentious relationship with his father (“I see your face in a broken home”), years lost to family estrangement and stubborn pride, and the hope to move past the trauma.
Ramos howls sincerely throughout the epic cut, while the somehow both aching and triumphant guitar melodies should bring a tear to even the most dark-hearted deathcore fan.
Roman Candle – “Fire in the Night Sky Forever”
Vegas screamo quartet Roman Candle dropped the match and delivered an explosive statement with their “Fire in the Night Sky Forever,” a song about “betrayal, punishment and self-resurrection” that arrives spiked with fierce yet melancholy riffage and drum fills that pop like a fireworks factory gone ablaze.
Though we’re beyond ready for more music to arrive from Roman Candle, perhaps we’ll heed the sage, if seething, advice vocalist Piper Ferrari’s peppers into this piece: “Patience is a virtue.”