Style: Metalcore, mathcore (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, Johnny Booth
Country: Georgia, United States
Release date: 16 May 2025

As a genre, mathcore often sounds like bands are throwing everything they’ve got at the wall just to see what sticks: syncopation, polymeters, dissonance, shit; take your pick. When bands don’t wield these components with careful aim, it leaves the wall a garish mosaic of incoherently smeared elements and dangling concepts. That said, when mathcore’s done well, and its rhythmic rebelliousness and explosive cacophony are anchored in abiding, ardent homage to its punk-rock parentage, the result is less a splatter of unchecked aggression and more a display of challenging, charged artistry. The Callous Daoboys’ previous offerings, however, have struck me as a bit too much shit-on-the-wall. Drawing on unmistakable influences from mathcore titans like Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch, the Daoboys stacked even more elements on top of genre staples like fluctuating rhythms, prevailingly harsh vocals, and intemperate aggression, adding in more synths than is typical of the genre, highly segmented compositions, and a dose of nu-metal. The resulting auditory fracas landed a little too frenetically for my ears. Back with their third full-length album, I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven, the question becomes: has the chaos crystallized?

I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven’s spoken word introduction frames the album as a cultural relic discovered three hundred years in the future and provides a sort of mission statement for the themes to be explored within. The narrator lists “heartbreak, anguish, frustration, infidelity, lust, addiction, divorce, and suffering”, before frontman Carson Pace’s screams burst open the first real track, “Schizophrenia Legacy”. Gangly guitar riffs hulk and lurch across the track’s shifting metres, setting a raucous pace for the album that roils at an urgently adrenalized boil.

This rawly emotional bombardment is punishing until it’s rewarding; overwhelming until it coheres; unrelenting until, six tracks in, it relents. The lush instrumental opening of “Lemon” provides some respite, but it’s no ballad, with insistently rhythmic guitar and almost jungly synths that call to mind The White Lotus’ subtly unsettling soundtrack. “Lemon” slides imperceptibly into the similarly understated “Body Horror for Birds”. These two tracks’ impact may be diminished by stacking them back-to-back in the midst of the album’s shrieking onslaught, but this brief respite in calmer waters is rich in reward: some of the more melodically lavish moments here, particularly from the synths and violin, are terrific. 

Pace describes I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven as a kind of personal artifact of his twenties, a “snapshot of 24-27”, and the Daoboys abide by this visceral personalness steadfastly. For all its boundary-pushing and shapeshifting, I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven rings with a familiar kind of MTV-coded emo/punk nostalgia. Listening to tracks like “Distracted by the Mona Lisa”, I could be standing on a stretch of sun-baked asphalt outside an early-aughts strip mall, showing a CD of this album to my friends as we pass by the video rental shop. 

The vocal performance takes centre stage, saturated with harrowed angst that is authentic if also at times lyrically corny¹. Trying to divorce the emotional resonance from Pace’s technical delivery would be foolish: his screams and rock-solid emo-tinted clean vocals throb with each of the emotions from the album’s opening mission statement in turn. The supporting musical cast wields everything from funky bass lines and spider-like scrabbling guitars to wrenchingly poignant violin and silky-smooth saxophone with skill, sometimes all within a few minutes. My one real gripe is that Amber Christman’s periodic violin interludes seem to be underserved by the album’s composition; if you’re going to have a violinist on force as a full-fledged member of your band, you should let them contribute more than just ornamental fringe. 

At fifty-seven minutes, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven starts to stretch at the seams. For instance, nearly three minutes of rippling wordless vocal effects and delicate instrumentals could be cut from the start of closer “Country Song in Reverse” at no loss. But I wonder if the poise and patience that somewhat bloats the album’s runtime is part of what makes it work for me. While disparity and incongruity could be considered hallmarks of mathcore as a genre, they’re wielded more skillfully here than on the Callous Daoboys’ previous outings: transitions are less abrupt, and different ideas are given time to develop, instead being chucked at the wall one after another.

In pulling their chaos into a more deliberate shape, The Callous Daoboys have made something that sticks. The balance between emotional volatility and compositional control is what sets this fiercely personal yet tightly executed record apart from their earlier work.  I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven channels that timeless, angst-ridden need for catharsis through a funnel of technical precision and ambition, and the result is sure to leave a mark, whether you want it to or not.

Recommended tracks: Two-Headed Trout, Lemon, III. Country Song in Reverse
You may also like: The Number Twelve Looks Like You, Candiria, Benthos
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: MNRK Heavy – Facebook | Official Website

The Callous Daoboys is:
Jackie Buckalew – Bass, backing vocals
Maddie Caffrey – Guitars
Amber Christman – Violin
Matthew Hague – Drums, backing vocals
Daniel Hodsdon – Guitars, backing vocals
Carson Pace – Lead vocals, synthesizers

With guests:
Rich Castillo – Saxophone 
Justin Young – Narration
Jake Howard – Additional production 
Adam Easterling – Guest vocals
Tyler Syphertt – Additional vocals
Ryan Hunter — Guest vocals
Dawson Beck – Backing vocals
Allan Romero – Trumpets, trombones, and saxophone
Andrew Spann – Guest vocals

1. “You should know by now that it’s not cool to wear metalcore t-shirts around your family / It doesn’t make you interesting at all” is a little on the nose, no? ︎

The post Review: The Callous Daoboys – I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Progressive metal, mathcore, djent (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Tesseract, The Dillinger Escape Plan, The Contortionist, Rolo Tomassi, Protest the Hero, The Mars Volta, Ions
Country: Italy
Release date: 11 March, 2025

Contrary to the wisdom of everyone’s favourite mad shredder, Yngwie Malmsteen, more isn’t more; less is more. Take the 1993 classic film, Jurassic Park, a landmark in special effects and everyone’s favourite dinosaur-laden romp. You’re probably picturing the T-Rex breaking out of the paddock, the majestic reveal of the brachiosaurus, or any number of iconic raptor scenes. You might be surprised, then, to hear that over the course of the film’s 127-minute runtime¹, dinosaurs grace the screen for a mere 15 minutes—or roughly 12% of the film. Everything you remember about that iconic piece of cinema you remember for its brevity, and the same is true of music; sometimes your sound can be defined by the thing you do sparingly.

Such an approach was certainly the aim on the debut of Italian prog metallers Benthos, but the confusingly-titled II struggled to break free of the shadow of their main influence, The Contortionist. Reinvigorated some four years on, their sophomore emphasises the nascent elements in their debut and brings them to the fore: mathy moments redolent of The Dillinger Escape Plan or Rolo Tomassi vie with djenting grooves and softer atmospheres, occasionally even segueing into The Mars Volta-esque trippy interludes. Some tracks flow rather gracefully (“From Nothing”), others are stitched together monstrosities (“Perpetual Drone Monkeys”), abrasive metal rubbing up against strange ambiences, alternately exploding and collapsing. 

Fittingly, “Fossil” may best demonstrate that Jurassic Park style less-is-more approach: abrasive, discordant math metal passages perforate the song’s facade at many junctures, but, despite being the defining feature of the music, they’re not the most common element. Across From Nothing, Gabriele Landillo’s soft, Dan Tompkins-esque cleans are utilised far more often than his harshes, and the composition remains legibly melodic for the most part, veering into total pandemonium for emphasis, rather than as a crutch. Comparisons to the likes of The Dillinger Escape Plan, then, should be taken with a pinch of salt. There are moments that sing from the hymn sheet of mathcore’s greatest group, but for the most part, Benthos stick to a more mellow register, recalling groups like Ions and The Safety Fire. 

Take “Let Me Plunge”, for example. At around the two minute mark, a heretofore measured riff suddenly mutates into discordant chaos. It takes all of about six seconds, but that sudden abrasiveness keeps the listener on their toes. Like getting a glimpse of a raptor’s claw in the opening of Spielberg’s iconic blockbuster², Benthos’ interjections of cacophony may not last long, but they’re a warning to the listener. And the listener is rewarded with their 12%: “As a Cordyceps” erupts repeatedly into hardcore-inspired vocals and blunt dissonant chords, “Fossil” opens in truly madcap Dillinger fashion and explodes into a chaotic crescendo before some much-needed respite, and “Perpetual Drone Monkeys” might be the most relentless track on the album; energetic and jarring as it whiplashes from djent to hardcore to math and back again with abandon. Nevertheless, this trio of tracks contains the vast bulk of the heavier and chaotic work on From Nothing.

Much of the rest of the time, From Nothing is defined by a jangling chorus effect on the chords and slightly off-kilter vocal harmonies, sitting somewhere between The Contortionist and Ions. “The Giant Child” is straightforward structurally and is arguably the record’s softest track, the band almost relaxed, Alessandro Tagliani’s intricate percussion notwithstanding. “Pure” follows with a mathier Tesseract vibe, but nevertheless eschewing heaviness until an explosive finale. The only exception to the light/heavy contrast running through the album is “Athletic Worms” which is simply insane. Robotic vocals play over zany instrumentation that sounds more like Igorrr. It’s an oddity on an otherwise more serious record, and likely to be the one that polarises listeners, but it nevertheless showcases the band’s creativity. And if that ain’t chaos theory then what is?

The most unexpected influence on Benthos is The Mars Volta. There’s a chaotic jazzy psychedelia undergirding many of From Nothing’s sonic decisions. When “Fossil” isn’t doing Dillinger-style mathcore, it’s exploring rapid jazz chord play and watery chorus effects. There’s also frenetic jazzy riffing juxtaposed with psychedelic, almost shoegaze moments in “To Everything”. Meanwhile, Landillo’s highest notes even have a touch of Bixler-Zavala to them, most notably in the opening to “Perpetual Drone Monkeys” which sounds like it just escaped from the comatorium. This facet of Benthos’ sound is what truly sets them apart from their contemporaries, injecting something slightly deranged into a more familiar facade. 

Less is more, Jurassic Park is a masterpiece, and From Nothing is a consistently intense, tightly composed paragon of modern progressive metal. With the agility of a pack of raptors, Benthos have cemented their own style and then some on a distinguished sophomore guaranteed to pull them into the scene’s limelight. They might not render their peers and predecessors extinct, but they’re certainly clever boys.

Recommended tracks: Let Me Plunge, As A Cordyceps, Perpetual Drone Monkeys, To Everything
You may also like: Without Waves, Exotic Animal Petting Zoo, The Hirsch Effekt
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | YouTube | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: InsideOut Music – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Benthos is:
– Gabriele Landillo (vocals)
– Gabriele Papagni (guitars)
– Enrico Tripodi (guitars)
– Alberto Fiorani (bass)
– Alessandro Tagliani (drums)

1.  This includes credits. Assuming that without credits the runtime is closer to 120 minutes, the percentage creeps up to 12.5%. ︎
2.  “Shoooot heeeeerrrr!” ︎

The post Review: Benthos – From Nothing appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: Mathcore, avant-garde metal, industrial rock (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Marilyn Manson, iwrestledabearonce, Frontierer, new Ulver
Country: Virginia, United States
Release date: 15 January 2025

We’ve got a lot to get into here, so I’m gonna keep this intro brief: sometimes an album is so bad and cheesy that it fills you with joy, like an aural equivalent of The Room (e.g., Kaosis’ We Are the Future). Other times, the Bad Music Lottery is much less kind and delivers upon you an experience which makes you feel worse off for hearing it—The Conjuration’s The Trip is unfortunately the latter, a two and a half hour deluge of anger, homage, and brain-searing chaos. Let’s discuss.

The Trip is, frankly, unlike anything I’ve heard before. Yes, all of the elements on their own are redolent of specific influences, whether it be the Frontierer-flavored mathcore that abruptly cuts through the opening voiceover, the manic iwrestledabearonce-style scattershot songwriting across virtually every track, or the industrial electronic moments that vacillate between edgy Marilyn Manson homages and the worst modern Ulver B-side you’ve ever heard. Even the bevy of zany manic vocals and spoken word sections have been attempted by the likes of The World is Quiet Here, Cheeto’s Magazine, and Blake Hobson in the past. What makes The Trip unique, though, is how all these elements are brought together in a tumultuous whirlpool of raw frustration and fervence through anguished lyricism and ferocious discordance. The end result is a primordial soup constantly bubbling and rearranging its organic compounds to articulate multi-instrumentalist Corey Jason Cochran’s myriad fury at the world.

Don’t mistake this editorializing of The Trip’s vexation as a compliment, though: I’ve never heard anything like this album before because it’s a terrible idea, a release thrown together with such abandon that it is truly and utterly unlistenable. Part of what makes Frontierer compelling despite their loudness and chaos, for example, is their ability to repeat and evolve a singular rhythm instead of pasting together their shrill explosive intensity haphazardly, a feat which The Trip fails to accomplish in any of its hundreds of musical passages. And this is coming from the Subway’s biggest Car Bomb fan!¹

Compounding the songwriting woes is that almost none of the passages that are being unceremoniously strung together are memorable or even enjoyable, whether they are ruined by grating vocal performances (“The Burning Moon”, “fucknuckle and Tendon”, “The Madness of Melanie Rose”), annoying voice over sections (“Mandata”, “Trip”, the hopelessly long spoken word skit in “at the table {stomp | punk}”), or plodding nothing-burger doom riffage in the absence of insane mathcore (“Call of the Void”).

When throwing a 150-minute album together, there is bound to be at least a couple of good ideas, and indeed, The Trip does have moments that are listenable and some even creep towards a semblance of fun: “fucknuckle and Tendon” intermixes jazz fusion and death metal in a quirky way; the relatively pleasant soft alt-rock moments of “A.D. (Manson Medley)” are a welcome reprieve; and the decent Meshuggah-style guitar solo and prominent bass of “Lorelei” had my ears perked for a moment. It’s all a moot point, though, because by the time I’ve gotten to these parts, I’ve been endlessly fed two and a half hours of featureless unlistenable slop, burdened with the task of creating patterns to distinguish the differences between each plate in my head. As a consequence, any cordial feelings I may have for The Trip’s comparatively agreeable sections have withered into an apathetic husk.

When I review an album, I like to try and understand the point of view of the artist and assess how well the execution reads to me, and in this case, The Trip comes less with a point of view and more with a psychological profile. The lyrics at any given time detail either struggles in The Conjuration’s life or frustrated musings on any number of topics done in a way that feels both juvenile and completely off the top of the head. While I don’t fault The Conjuration at all for writing about his insecurities, personal experience, and hardship, his social commentary is bottom of the barrel at best: some particularly striking offenders are the painfully surface-level callouts of societal issues on “Wrong Time” (‘How can you not see it? / There’s so much going on… / Agenda, symbolism, diversion / Media manipulation, public school subversion’) or the one-two punch of unbearable cringe on “Trip”, first hitting us with lines like ‘They say “Eat the bugs, live in the pod” / No rich asshole will ever be my god / Wanna dictate my life? Better get caskets for two / Cuz you know fighting back is what Americans do’ followed by the eyeroll-inducing ‘Must I kill everyone you love / To finally make you / Raise a fucking brow? / Just kiddin’ / Ain’t nuttin but music ;)’. I would like to say he isn’t technically wrong, but truthfully, I don’t even know what point he’s trying to get across half the time, partially because the commentary is so vague and partially because the lyricism is so horrifically unhinged.²

Perhaps I would be more forgiving of The Trip were it pared down a considerable degree. In its current form, though, I can barely make it a tenth of the way through the album without starting to feel a negative psychological impact. Instead of articulating my thoughts in an organized manner, I’m just going to present to you a curated excerpt of my notes for The Trip so you can witness the decay of my wellbeing in real-time:

• Extremely abrupt opening with voice over
• No sense of cohesion, whiplashes from intense BTBAM part to voice over to intense part
• Annoying song. The reversed drums go on for way too long and repetitive. This could have been an email.
• More BAD ULVER IT’S ALL BAD ULVER
• I’m being punished with walls of unrelated ideas
• I’m starting to miss the aggressive nothing mathcore, it’s so much more listenable than the slow-paced nothing doom metal
• Is my brain addled with ADHD at the hands of social media or does this album have anti-memetic properties that are actively repelling my brain from processing it?
• Track begins with deathcore hell Christmas music
• Semblance of decent keyboard ideas, but at this point, who gives a fuck?

Every moment of The Trip points me to a singular question: who is art for? Of course, there is the obvious surface-level discussion of ‘if you’re a fan of X then you’ll love Y’ or ‘this is a great listen for people who enjoy Z lyricism’, but more fundamentally, the artist virtually always has a specific idea of who they are relaying their message to, and in the case of The Trip, the art is most likely meant for none other than The Conjuration himself. Devin Townsend, for example, has taken this approach many times in his art: Devin has described the songwriting process of Strapping Young Lad’s Alien as ‘toxic’ and ‘psychologically very unhealthy’ but also necessary as a means to get through a turbulent mental state, as it required him to go to extremes that were cathartic but ultimately unhealthy. In a similar vein, Devin Townsend Project’s Deconstruction, particularly the title track, is such a maelstrom of ideas that it comes across more as a canvas for Devin to purge thoughts that simply won’t leave his mind than it does his next acclaimed masterpiece. It’s great if others happen to like it, but in the end, the appeal of a wider audience’s sensibilities is wholly secondary to the actual creation of the art itself. At first blush, this may seem selfish and onanistic as a songwriting goal, but more likely, this approach is born out of necessity: art is ultimately a cathartic process for the artist and its validity is not contingent upon things like cohesive song structures, reining in relentless chaos, or tactful lyricism.

Frankly, I feel worse off having listened to The Trip: it is excessively long, frustratingly unfocused, and comes from a point of view that furiously grates against my sensibilities. On the other hand, The Trip’s scattershot musical ideas, frenetic stream-of-consciousness lyricism about Cochran’s feelings and sentiments, and willingness to let the project balloon into a two and a half hour opus all point towards the idea that in the end, The Trip was created for The Conjuration and The Conjuration alone. You can come along for The Trip if you want, but there was never any intention to save a seat for you. While I hope that The Conjuration comes out the other side of his struggles better off, I personally will not be booking a second ride, because this Trip is not a Trip for me, nor was it ever meant for me, and in the end, I’m okay with that.

Recommended tracks: fucknuckle and Tendon, Lorelei, A.D. (Manson Medley)
You may also like: Nuclear Dudes, Others by No One, The World is Quiet Here, uneXpect
Final verdict: 1/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Metal-Archives page

Label: Independent

The Conjuration is:
– Corey Jason Cochran (vocals, guitars, bass)
– Lauren Myers (vocals)
– Liam Myers (vocals)
– Brandon Turner (vocals)
– Ashley Davis (vocals)
– Cody Shaffer (jaw harp)

1. I have been informed by my co-writer Justin that I am actually the Subway’s second-biggest Car Bomb fan behind him, but my point still stands. ︎
2. Don’t even get me started on the lyrics to “Another Corpse for the Brothel”—that track is particularly vile even in the context of the violent and chaotic lyricism to be found elsewhere on The Trip. Worst of all, it feels like a complete waste, coming across as nothing more than a cheap attempt at shock value through unnecessarily disgusting, gory, and scummy imagery. Seriously, fuck this song. ︎

The post Review: The Conjuration – The Trip appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Artist name not shared publicly.

Style: Mathcore, Djent (Harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Meshuggah, Car Bomb, Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: France
Release date: 17 January 2025

As I’ve gotten a bit older and wisened, I’ve thought more and more about the “album experience”, if you will. Often in this world of prog and prog-adjacent music, the album experience and package is held tantamount, and the expectation of delivering such a product is a rite of passage. Even in today’s algorithmic driven music industry (curse you!), the ultimate product for basically every act in the scene is a real album. But therein lies the rub: what dictates a full album experience, and at what point is there more material for the sake of runtime? This is something I think bands find themselves bumping up against more often in the current world, where attention is harder to wrest away than ever.

So why do I say all this at the top of a review of a mathcore album of all things? Honestly, it’s because my very first thought after finishing The Purest Light was: “Man this would be great if it was thirty-eight minutes instead of fifty.”

Vertex are a French Car Bomb and Meshuggah hybrid, with all the chugging riffs and angular rhythms pounding the eardrums from start to finish that you’d expect from that comparison. The first song “All My Hatred” immediately gives you exactly this combination, with its whammy-esque lead hook hitting immediately, juxtaposed with low chug diversions in between, which serve as some sort of verse—if such a thing really exists in this type of music. Not long after, you’ll hear riffs utilizing the high-fretboard, low-string sound that songs like “Demiurge” made famous. Most of the album is giving you some version of these two modes—either a descent into the more alien noises a guitar could make, or a dissertation on the ways to grid a rhythm on the bar line.

The most intrigue is created when there is deviation from this formula, when the riffs Vertex veer off to have an extra melodic quality, and create that magical sense of a riff you want to sing as it worms its way into your brain. The back quarter of the title track is the first real taste of this, with a chug+lead pairing that delves more into Animals as Leaders territory than the first bits of the album. Immediately after “The Purest Light”, you are dropped into “Leviathan”, which opens with the exact kind of singable riff I crave. This is where I wish Vertex spent the bulk of their time: in a melodic zone which gives the angular intrigue of mathcore while still providing an earworm hook.

The drums on The Purest Light stand out more than any other instrument, with Pierre Rettien of Hypno5e holding down that front. The performance is a highlight reel of linear fills, sporadic blasts, and impeccable footwork across barely readable rhythms. The vocals are the standard fare one would expect, being almost exclusively mid tone, either punctuating riffs and rhythms or moving parallel to them—existing alongside but never touching. The production and presentation is a highlight of the album, with absolute clarity in every instrument without sacrificing too much bite or losing heaviness.

But in the end, the successes of The Purest Light, while many, suffer from a lack of memorability and simply dragging on too long. When Knocked Loose put out their last album, it was unflinching and heavy without compromise—but it clocked at twenty-seven minutes. It had “hooks”. Vertex, I think, would have succeeded more with The Purest Light by taking a similar approach: streamlining the album’s material and reducing the amount of parts that, in the end, meld together into the nebulous thought of “yeah it had some chugs and some dadada dada dada dadadas”. In the moment, many passages feel great and give you a bit of the stink face, but I don’t find myself waiting for those on re-listens or even really remembering them. Instead I’m anticipating and skipping to the moments of melody and the earworms hidden in some of the best songs—anything that actually felt like it was meant to hook me—and grabbing onto those pieces for as long as I can.

Recommended tracks: The Purest Light, Leviathan, Following Arrows
You may also like: Fronterier, Freighter
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Le Cri Du Charbon – Official Website

Vertex is:
– Pierre Rettien (drums)
– Michael Alberto Merone (bass)
– Maxence Griffond (guitars)
– Kik Mastan (vocals)

The post Review: Vertex – The Purest Light appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: deathcore, mathcore (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Frontierer, The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza, The Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: Pennsylvania, United States
Release date: 10 January 2025

Of the many strange effects the Internet has had on global music culture, one of the most paradoxical has to be the simultaneous acceleration and stagnation of distinct music scenes. Nowadays, bands pray not for record or tour deals but for TikTok virality. As such, trends live and die by the algorithm, and what sees success one week lives in the gutters the next. At the same time though, nostalgia has never been more prevalent. Anemoia, nostalgia for a time in which you never lived, thrives in the Internet age, and its effects can be seen in the success of bands like Greta Van Fleet and The Sword. Like a snake eating its tail, when these two phenomena combine the results eventually loop back in on themselves. 

And it seems like the revival of aughts-era deathcore is finally here in the form of Gnostician’s debut Unification As An Art. Instrumentally, Gnostician plays a style of acerbic mathy hardcore that reminds me most of the hyper-aggressive Frontierer although they eschew the more hardcore-leaning vox for a vocal approach that sounds straight from Myspace-era deathcore. Regarding its general aesthetic and with features from members of The Last Ten Seconds of Life and Arsonists Get All The Girls, Unification as an Art feels equally as much a love letter to the math- and deathcore scene of years past as it does an attempt to revive it in the modern age.

Like a lot of deathcore, Gnostician’s general ethos on Unification As An Art seems to favor a track’s vocals above all else. For their short run times, these tracks stuff in a hefty amount of lyrics surely deep enough to drown in, yet opaque enough to be completely inaccessible to me in my several listens. Thankfully, I can’t even understand them half the time as the vocal deliveries across this album are downright vitriolic. Ranging from the blackened shrieks that echo throughout the album’s intro’s blast beats on “Corpus I: Prima Lux” to the burly gutturals that adorn the nearly constant breakdowns across the album, the vocal variety is really something to admire. Unfortunately, Gnostician may have pushed the envelope too far; I personally found the nearly constant multi-tracked vocals ear fatiguing in the album’s back half. Multi-tracked harshes are cool and all, but sometimes nothing beats a raw solitary vocal take like in the outro of The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza’s “The Alpha the Omega.” To Gnostician’s credit, it does make good use of a spoken vocal style on tracks like “Alkazoth” and “Evaprosthetic,” breaking through the wall of gutturals and standing out in my memory.

In addition to the heady lyrics, Unification As An Art often features moments of a more cerebral compositional style that elevate the album above the traditional deathcore fare; from the already mentioned blackened atmospherics of “Corpus I: Prima Lux” to the Mastodon-esque outro of “Coagulara, Crown of the Sun” and the hip hop laden intro of “The Seventh Cycle,” each of these tracks stand head and shoulders above their peers thanks to these moments (although the latter may get too close to coworker-core for many to wholeheartedly enjoy). In fact, I found myself fiending for more moments like these on the more straight ahead cuts like “Alembic in Nature” and “Dwarf Star Partition” where I found the band’s traditional approach once again fatiguing. In any sort of -core genre, I love hearing wild experimentation, so I’d love to see what Gnostician could do if they took the same approach to their composition as they did their lyric writing.

Ultimately, I enjoyed Unification As An Art, and if it weren’t for a few missteps regarding vocal production and a few dud tracks, I’d have loved it. So while Gnostician may not have successfully revived Myspace-era deathcore, they may just be summoning something greater just so long as they keep their fervent creative energy alive and really let it run loose.

Recommended tracks: Corpus I: Prima Lux; Alkazoth; Coagulara, Crown of the Sun
You may also like: Under the Pier, The Dali Thundering Concept
Final verdict: 6.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Independent

Gnostician is:
– Zach Perry
– Hunter Derr
– Ben Pypiak
– Christopher Valentin
– Logan Beaver

The post Review: Gnostician – Unification as an Art appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Style: dissonant death metal, mathcore, technical death metal (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Imperial Triumphant, Gorguts, The Dillinger Escape Plan, Chat Pile, Car Bomb, Frontierer
Country: United States-NY
Release date: 6 September 2024

“First off, fuck Elon Musk”: the opening line of Jpegmafia and Danny Brown’s instant hip-hop classic Scaring the Hoes. Pyrrhon’s lyricist and vocalist extraordinaire Doug Moore starts Exhaust similarly—albeit a tad more literarily with his characteristic blend of flash prose and Realist poetry—the first track “Not Going to Mars” is a big fuck you to Elon Musk. Who isn’t sick of his shit by now? Exhaust revolves around the theme of societal exhaustion: the inability to pay for things as basic as medical care because of the felicity of circumstance (“Strange Pains,” “Luck of the Draw”), the degradation of life for capitalist overuse (“Concrete Charlie,” “Last Gasp”), and a general dread of societal problems like social media, artificial intelligence, and constant advertisement. In an increasingly divided country and world, everybody’s stretched a little thin.

With some introspection, Pyrrhon realized this applied to them as a band, too, losing their spark in a feeling of collective dis-inspiration. Their solution was renting out a cabin with a glut of psychedelics and their instruments: the results speak for themselves. This is a band who’ve rediscovered their teenage vitality. An endless stream of contorted riffs, Exhaust is frantic and abrasive with its mix of Ad Nauseamisms, Imperial Triumphant’s jazziness, Frontierer-esque mathcore sections, and a hearty dash of The Dillinger Escape Plan in Moore’s vocals which shift from sewer-y gutturals and acerbic screams to uncanny half-clean wails. Moreover, as half of Pyrrhon is now in Scarcity, the comparisons to The Promise of Rain from earlier this year are clear, especially with regards to process. Exhaust brims with vibrant energy, overflowing with intensity of a live show. Dylan DiLella’s guitar lines are more varied than his parts on Scarcity’s opus, but several of the disorienting treble bits are translated, and there’s a blackened underpinning to the already complex dissonant and technical death metal-cum-mathcore.

At a perfectly paced thirty-eight minutes and ten tracks, Exhaust is superb to delve into ad nauseam. From the zesty guitar solos in “Not Going to Mars” and “First as Tragedy” to the breakdown in “Luck of the Draw” to the flurrying blast beats to close out the album on “Hell Medicine,” every track is insanely memorable with genuinely endless highlights. My girlfriend (who runs our social media) commented I was thrashing around too violently listening to Exhaust, and it’s definitely caused the same neck pain as a grand old time at a metal concert. I can’t help but get involved with Pyrrhon’s infectious grooves; holding down the rhythm section, Steve Schwegler (drums) and Erik Malave (bass) warp time signatures and intricate jazziness in such a way that you forget it’s absurdly complicated. The churning drumming alternates between impeccably tasteful blast beats, perfectly placed fills, and—importantly—an integration into the rest of Pyrrhon so as to operate as a seamless, squalid unit. Malave holds down the fort with an absolutely filthy bass tone straight from the vile side of NYC, and when he takes a lead like in the free jazz-esque build of the middle portion of “Stress Fractures,” Pyrrhon clearly ascends a level. The band knows his worth.

While Exhaust is paced perfectly—intermittent slower tracks providing some much needed respite from the aberrant technical death metal—I think “Out of Gas” is a clear step below the rest of Exhaust. Its slow 5/4 intro would be at home on an Imperial Triumphant track, and it builds satisfyingly to a noisy climax, but for the first couple minutes Moore’s strange clean vocals border on the weird side of hardcore (think Chat Pile), and I find his slam poetry-like delivery to be not my style. It’s appreciated that Pyrrhon lay off the throttle on occasion, though. Thankfully, not a note is amiss across Exhaust, and Colin Marston’s legendary production touches sound phenomenal, one of his best works yet. He captures the filth, the vibrancy, and injects his own characteristically creative touch to create a flawless sonic artifact, dry and clear. I couldn’t imagine anybody else capturing the end of “The Greatest City on Earth” like Marston; the whole section features Moore’s strangest, most-convincing imagery while the band precisely ramps up the chaotic heaviness, a rather insane ending for merely the third track on the album.

Pyrrhon have always had the goods—The Mother of Virtues and What Passes for Survival are absolutely essential avant-garde death metal listens—but they’ve fully hit their stride here, balancing their intricate abstractions and an addicting zest. For an album so dense, the riffs and song structures are remarkably accessible without sacrificing an ounce of challenging musicality. Shrooms and a cabin perfected Pyrrhon’s approach, and while I’m exhausted from a tough start to the semester, Exhaust is providing me with a breath of fresh air and the vivacity to persevere.

Recommended tracks: Not Going to Mars, The Greatest City on Earth, Strange Pains, Luck of the Draw, Stress Fractures, Hell Medicine
You may also like: Scarcity, Aseitas, Ad Nauseam, Weeping Sores
Final verdict: 9.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Facebook | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: Willowtip Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Pyrrhon is:
Erik Malave – bass guitar, backing vocals
Dylan DiLella – guitars
Doug Moore – vocals
Steve Schwegler – drums

The post Review: Pyrrhon – Exhaust appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Genres: Mathcore, djent (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Car Bomb, Meshuggah, Frontierer
Country: UK/ Oregon, US
Release date: 15 March 2024

One of the only albums to truly put me on edge and feel uncomfortable is Pig Destroyer’s Prowler in the Yard. The music itself is horrific in its own right, but the text-to-speech voice that bookends the album truly put me on edge, especially the ending silence of closer ‘Piss Angel’, leaving you to contemplate the horror of what you just listened to . It’s one of the most bone-chilling moments in metal for me, and any band that can replicate that feeling have my immense respect.

So, Weston Super Maim kind of cheated by sampling this text-to-speech voice with the opener of See You Tomorrow Baby, but boy was it effective at getting my attention. The album wastes no time with a math-y assault on all senses right away. Within 3 and a half minutes, Weston Super Maim make it their mission statement to boggle your mind with time signature fuckery and a surprising shift into clean vocal melody about halfway through.

As much as I love getting my ass blasted by Car Bomb rhythms and Meshuggah chugs, the shift into an electronica-influenced and actually melodic section while still retaining the time-sig nonsense is what initially sold me on Weston Super Maim. My co-reviewer and possibly surrogate father Christopher (who recommended this to me because he knows of this band through some friends [Christopher: Yo, Tom, I found you guys through Andrea and Matt]), knew this would appeal to my affinity for music that annihilates the ears, but I didn’t think he knew just how much.

‘Autistic Kill Trance’, quite possibly song title of the year, jolts you back awake with Car Bomb laser pistol noises that lead straight into a crushing breakdown, punctuated by Blindfolded and Led to the Woods vocalist Stace Fifeld. This track lessened all fears that See You Tomorrow Baby had an ounce of formula to it, as it gives you but a moment to breathe before bludgeoning you over the head again, and ensures that you don’t get used to clean vocals or any kind of melodic breaks.

See You Tomorrow Baby fucking tears through its mere eight tracks in just shy of forty minutes, which is the sweet spot for an album this aggressive. Unlike Meshuggah, an obvious influence, Weston Super Maim make sure their transitions are as janky as possible. The changes are as jarring as they should be, and the production is just the right amount of suffocating to make sure some background melody still peaks through. Just as I began to grow weary, ‘Slow Hell’s ending bursts with keyboards and shiny, background synth melodies.

Obviously, this album isn’t going to appeal to everyone. A Car Bomb FFO is bound to turn some noses, and I can respect the cowardice. It takes a very special kind of braindead to enjoy a constant barrage of pummeling riffs and noises a guitar shouldn’t make, all as one especially angry man screams at you. In fact, Weston Super Maim themselves don’t even get it all right. ‘Johnny Mnemonic’’s constant rhythm took up too much of the song for the late guitar solo to save it, and ‘Brute Fact’ ends just as it begins to pick up. 

Thankfully, ‘The Bare Maximum’ picks up the quality right where it left off. This and the closer are easily my two favorite tracks, with the former having an absolute ripper of a solo by Soreption’s Ian Wayne. While closer ‘Perfect Meadows in Every Direction’ could’ve easily toppled under the eight-minute runtime, but the transition into melody that closes out the album was such a high note to go out on. Even with a backdrop of screamed vocals, the album perfectly ends with that blend of aggression and melody it started with. 

Since discovering this, I’ve gone back and listened to Weston Super Maim’s debut, and was shocked at the progress they’ve made in such a short time. These two lads have the talent to pull off true time signature wizardry, and even though still slightly rough around the edges, they’ve clearly put the work in to make an uncompromising, crushing vision. I really can’t wait another three years to see what Weston Super Maim does next, and how it’ll absolutely destroy my eardrums in the best way possible.

Recommended tracks: Autistic Kill Trance, The Bare Maximum, See You Tomorrow Baby, Pleasant Fields
You may also like: Ὁπλίτης, Frostbitt

Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Label: Independent

Weston Super Maim is:
– Seth Detrick (vocals)
– Tom Stevens (music)

The post Review: Weston Super Maim – See You Tomorrow Baby appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Genres: brutal prog, avant-garde jazz, mathcore (occasional harsh vocals, mostly instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: John Zorn, Car Bomb, The Dillinger Escape Plan
Country: France
Release date: 1 December 2023

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not well versed in brutal prog. Before I listened to this album, I would not have been able to even define the sound of the genre, and I’m still not certain that I’d be able to after listening to Ni’s recent output Fol Naïs which sees the band weave together the aforementioned genre of brutal prog, inflections of avant-garde jazz, as well as a very healthy helping of mathcore, the genre which served as my main point of reference as I attempted to comprehend all that Ni had to offer on their recent release.

As soon as the first riff of opening track “Zerkon” kicked into gear, I was reminded rhythmically of bands like Car Bomb and The Dillinger Escape Plan. Each subsequent flurry of notes is an off-kilter snapshot of some unidentifiable object from a seemingly impossible angle; try as I may to piece the images together, the result is always more puzzling than when I started. Ni then supplement this rhythmic intensity with equally chaotic melodic choices that see squealing guitars and groaning bass precariously juggled about yet always landing in a place that makes sense, at least within this album’s internal logic. This approach of rhythmic and melodic chaos takes up a large portion of the sound on Fol Naïs, but it is not the only trick Ni has up their sleeve. If it were, you’d be reading a much more negative review, instead you get to hear about just how hard Ni can groove.

Once again just like my favorite mathcore band Car Bomb, Ni are consistently able to find ways to take the chaos that they have crafted and meticulously yet efficiently pare it down to something that actually gets my head moving. To continue my example with “Zerkon”, after the tumultuous intro, the song steadily shifts into a pulsing polyrhythmic drum and bass groove whereupon the guitars are free to explore more textural sonic spaces, which mostly end up being spacey shrieks and wails. Moments like this where I could actually somewhat wrap my head around what I was hearing were what kept me coming back to Fol Naïs; these were the moments that elevated this album from technically impressive to actually somewhat enjoyable.

I also shouldn’t forget to mention the electronic elements that, while rare, were another contributor to my enjoyment. As soon as they were introduced in “Brusquet”, the unique way in which they mesh with the incessant drumming attack provided a clever way of simultaneously temporally locking in this album’s sound and providing some textural diversity, something I desperately needed, especially as the album stretched into its back half. 

You may find that I found this album a bit of a slog slightly surprising; after all, it’s only forty-eight minutes, about as ideal of an album length as I could imagine, but there is just so much technical wankery constantly being thrown at me that I inevitably check out during my listening. Although Ni themselves do seem self-aware of this fact–the album art does depict two men huffing each others’ farts–it doesn’t change the fact that my favorite moments are when I could just actually comprehend what I was hearing. I do suspect that if I were to listen dozens of times over, I would perhaps get my bearings, alleviating this issue for me as it did for many mathcore bands prior, but as of now I find Fol Naïs a slog, only broken up by a few moments of groovy genius.

Recommended tracks: Brusquet, Zerkon, Cathelot
You may also like: PoiL, Seven Impale
Final verdict: 6/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: Dur et Doux – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Ni is:
– Anthony Béard (guitar, scream)
– François Mignot (guitar)
– Nicolas Bernollin (drums)
– Benoit Lecomte (bass)
– Simon Drouhin (boite à bourdon on Cathelot)

The post Review: Ni – Fol Naïs appeared first on The Progressive Subway.

Genres: avant-garde black metal, dissonant black metal, mathcore, zeuhl (mostly harsh vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Blut Aus Nord, Plebeian Grandstand, Frontierer
Country: China
Release date: 12 January 2024

New year, same shit. The world is brimming with corruption, a worldwide disregard for human rights, ongoing wars in Ukraine and Gaza, a new opioid epidemic, widening gaps between the wealthy and poor, a no-longer-just-looming climate crisis… this shit isn’t gonna disappear with your New Year’s resolution. After three wildly successful dissonant black metal albums cut with the intensity of mathcore in 2023, China’s Ὁπλίτης is back mere weeks into 2024 with his most vitriolic album yet. Written “in divine rage,” Παραμαινομένη seeps a pure hatred for the state of the world—music is Ὁπλίτης’s medium to express distilled fucking anger. Godspeed.

Rage takes on several forms throughout Παραμαινομένη, perhaps none more omnipresent than the drumming, which follows traditional black metal’s penchant for blast beats but also superimposes strange mathcore and zeuhl acrobatics. The overall package contains a veritable onslaught of intense, blasting grooves and downward-spiraling flurries as if Sermon, Magma, Car Bomb, and Mayhem’s percussion sections became one. The frenetic furores of drums impress from several elevations and both channels in the mix, inescapable in their rapidly morphing precision and power. Unlike most black metal, the guitars play a secondary role to the percussive elements of Παραμαινομένη, providing an acerbic bite in the background with their slimy, pulsating riffs, only occasionally taking a full lead like the unexpected but strong, technical solo out of the manic hardcore of “Συμμιαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ.” The sheer variety of riffs keeps Παραμαινομένη engaging for repeat listening, too. We’re treated to chugging djent, blackened tremolo monstrosities, agitated mathcore, Thantifaxath-esque, freaky ascending and dissonant scales, and plenty more. Amazingly, the guitar riffs always align perfectly like a completed, intricate puzzle with the shifty drumming. Pound for pound, this is one of the craziest, most diverse black metal experiences of the year, guaranteed. Moreover, the bass slices through the mix to add some serious heft to an otherwise too-fast-to-be-truly-heavy album. The bass’s constant phrygian noodling and staccato riffs provide a necessary bridge between the guitar and the drums, completing a holistic sound across the album.

While divine rage provides an easy-to-follow throughline throughout the album, Ὁπλίτης is unafraid to dissolve expectations, taking drastic leaps away from the formula he’d established on his 2023 opera. Taking cues from an increasingly diverse range of influences, Ὁπλίτης immediately establishes clean chanting in Greek in opener “Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ…” along with tribal drumming and a plucked acoustic instrument (possibly lute), but after that brief intro, all hell breaks loose in possibly the most vicious black metal I have ever heard, as pissed off as Frontierer. Ὁπλίτης took the energy from a supernova and converted the sublime magnitude of fuel into this fifty-three minute album—a black hole would have been safer. Most novel to the sound of Παραμαινομένη, though, are the woodwinds. Zeuhl sax and Demoniac/A.M.E.M. style clarinet freak the heck out at several points, providing a less incisive timbre on top of the metal yet sounding no less violent as their sounds are mutilated nearly beyond recognition with overblowing and vicious, unpredictable runs like an evil Ayler, Braxton, or Sanders. These unique ornamentations on each track save the album from crumpling under its own vile weight; while most albums this uncompromisingly heavy eventually falter from an oversaturation of brutality and never-ending riffs, I eat up moments like the dissonant piano solo and operatic soprano in “Συμμαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ” or the Meshuggah djent into clarinet shred into plucked Greek strings in “’Ἡ τῶν λυσσημάτων ἄγγελος.” Ὁπλίτης keep it fresh in spite of its never-relenting, progressive, barging hatred. Παραμαινομένη’s experimentation keeps the train on the tracks.

This album is exhausting at over fifty minutes of incredible intensity, but with how much it mutates and even uses softer sections like in the majority of the closer, “Ἄπαυστα θεία μανίαI,” I think it’s still successful. Ὁπλίτης is self-aware at how taxing the album is, too, coming out of his divine rage at the very end panting like he just finished a marathon—and I’d be panting, too, if I just had to play those drum parts, but I prefer to imagine it’s a statement of awareness about the density of the material. 

I always assumed something singularly imposing like Meshuggah’s I or Jute Gyte’s “Hesperus Is Phosphorus” was about as furious as music could be until I turned on Παραμαινομένη, but this album uses the most wicked parts of Frontierer and Thantifaxath to forge a diverse, barbed hellscape of ire far more real than black metal’s typical tongue-in-cheek nihilism. Maybe it’s the hardcore energy or the absurdity of its distorted zeuhl elements, but this album is a dire admonition about the world and an appropriate message for the start of the year. Listen, get fucking pissed off, and enact some real change before the earth gets swallowed in humanity’s hubris.

Recommended tracks: Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεὰ παραμαινομένη ἐμοῦ…, Συμμαινόμεναι Διονύσῳ Ἐλευθέριῳ
You may also like: Thantifaxath, Dodecahedron, Hebephrenique, Jute Gyte, Serpent Column, Red Rot, A.M.E.N.
Final verdict: 8/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Instagram | Metal-Archives page

Label: independent

Ὁπλίτης is:
– J. L. (everything)

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Style: Mathcore, Modernist Classical, Experimental (Instrumental)
Recommended for fans of: The Dillinger Escape Plan, Dmitri Shostakovich quartets, Krzysztof Penderecki, Mica Levi, Apocalyptica I guess but this might give you a nosebleed
Review by: Christopher
Country: New York, USA
Release date: 15 29 September, 2023

“One of Us is the Killer, I’m sure I’ve heard that name before…” You’d be right: it’s the title of The Dillinger Escape Plan’s fifth—and, in my opinion, best—album! Released ten years ago (yes, my bones ache too), this release by the ingenious mathcore legends was one of many tour de forces. Their complex, discordant, jazz-inflected sonic chaos garnered the New Jersey quintet an unlikely following, becoming one of the foremost experimental metal bands of their day. However, one question I’d be willing to bet few fans have ever asked themselves is “what if a string quartet covered Dillinger?” because what sort of insanity would ever compel anyone to ask that?¹ I’m not sure I believe it could work. 

Well, to quote the great band themselves: “fuck you, now try to disbelieve it”. New York-based string quartet Seven)Suns have covered this legendary release by a band whose style—according to their own guitarist, Ben Weinman—sounds like “garbage cans falling down stairs”. Seven)Suns have worked with Dillinger before, notably providing strings on the title track from Dissociation, but that’s accompaniment, not arrangement. To what degree can a string quartet—two violinists, a violist, and a cellist—really capture the mathematical clattering that is The Dillinger Escape Plan? 

In the skillful hands of Seven)Suns, One of Us is the Killer sounds more like modernist classical: think Stravinsky, Penderecki, or Shostakovich (indeed, the comparison I kept coming back to was the second movement of Shostakovich’s String Quartet No.8—the same relationship between dissonance and melody, between harshness and sublimity). In the hands of Seven)Suns, the crowing synth that opens “Understanding Decay” sounds more like the bloodcurdling strings from Psycho’s infamous shower scene. On the original “Prancer”, the climactic ending is the best part, but in Seven)Suns’ interpretation the chaotic swooping of the bridge section becomes the track’s defining moment, a much-needed melodic counterpoint to the atonality of the rest of the song. Meanwhile, their renditions of “Nothing’s Funny” and the title track prioritise the vocal melody as their throughlines, the former shifting into Pendereckian plucked anxiety for the bridge section, the latter’s scratchy rhythm part bestowing an almost folky flavour. 

As a fan, one already knows these songs intimately; to hear them transformed is a compelling and rewarding experience. Of course, without drums and vocals every instrument is being represented by strings and Seven)Suns somehow manage to capture those elements with the violin and the viola often carrying Puciato’s clean vocal melodies, and the cello attack providing a percussive energy. What’s interesting is that my favourites change too: the act of reinterpretation is one of transformation, and so while I sing the praises of “Prancer”, “Crossburner” and “The Threat of Nuclear Weapons” on the original album, I find Seven)Suns’ versions of “Understanding Decay”, “Paranoia Shields”, and “Magic That I Held You Prisoner” the most intriguing, strings having transformed—perhaps even elevated—those tracks. The heaviest sections of Dillinger aren’t as easily replicable as the melodic sections, relying more heavily on dissonance than on distortion; Seven)Suns truly shine on the eerie, clean harmonies. 

The translator Mireille Gansel declared translation “as risk-taking and as continual re-examination, of even a single word”; the same goes for even a single note. Seven)Suns demonstrate that rearrangement is itself an art form, a deconstruction of sound to its constituent parts only to build it up anew after risky reexamination. Dillinger’s original album is an untouchable masterpiece, but Seven)Suns’ alchemical reimagining is a completely different beast, totally familiar and yet irrevocably transformed. In rearranging One of Us is the Killer for strings, something new has been created, a masterwork in a different medium.

1.  A Ben Weinman level of insanity, as a matter of fact. After hearing Seven)Suns’ cover of “43% Burnt”, the Dillinger guitarist contacted the quartet about the anniversary project. Weinman and Seven)Suns violinist Earl Maneein discuss the intricacies of arranging mathcore for strings in this interview. 
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Recommended tracks: Understanding Decay, Paranoia Shields, Crossburner (or whichever track from this album you’re most excited to hear interpreted by a string quartet)
You may also like: Harry Stafylakis, Raphael Weinroth-Browne, Gleb Kolyadin, Daniel O’Sullivan
Final verdict: 8.5/10 (5/10 to Silent Pendulum Records for putting the wrong release date on Bandcamp)

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | YouTube | Facebook | Instagram | Twitter

Label: Silent Pendulum Records – Bandcamp | Facebook | Official Website

Seven)Suns is:
– Earl Maneein (violin)
– Adda Kridler (violin)
– Fung Chern Hwei (viola)
– Jennifer DeVore (cello)

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