an interview: Seven years of struggle and persistence poured out in less than 15 minutes

For screamo band Kid, Feral, the truth finally comes out

The song “Substance” has a lyric that captures Kid, Feral’s sound—a burning-at-both-ends sound, always changing, always shifting: "I'm trying to fill the gaps, changing shapes like they ask while I'm breaking.”

But later in the song, singer Vile Hartman screams, “This year is the same, just like the others / I'm scared I might just not grow old after all.”

I hear a story about somebody with an unstable identity struggling in a destabilized reality—and seeing only repetition.

Swedish screamo band Kid, Feral debuted with “Live and Let’s Die!” in 2018. And to hear the new album, you’d wonder if the band might not grow old after all because they still sound like mid-2010s-era screamo.

The album has that era’s fragility, and it has less guitar distortion and fewer hardcore vocals than today’s screamo bands, like Blind Girls and Portrayal of Guilt.

That’s partly because its recording started in 2019. The drums were recorded in October that year; the rest of the album, though, was rewritten, reworked, and rerecorded more than once since then. Those years were hard, personally, according to the band. But they did not let the album go.

Kid, Feral talked to me about the new album.

Damon: Hello, and congratulations on the album! I like it. The music has that cathartic quality that good screamo has. There’s a quote attributed to French poet Paul Valéry that says, in short, art is never finished, only abandoned. After almost 7 years, does it feel cathartic to release this album? Or does it feel more like you’re abandoning it? Or a mix?

Kid, Feral: Very, very cathartic. It's been super very weird to finally, FINALLY be done with the album. It took so much work. Just imagine—we've listened to these drum tracks from 25 to 32 years old.

I can say that we are all in the band 100-percent happy with the result. It definitely feels like a completion. I think all of us in the band are happy to never, ever work with these songs ever again ... ahaha!!

We're more looking forward to making new songs and not looking back so much after this debacle.

Probably releasing more often now. Seven years is not too hard to beat!
 

D: Had the album been released around 2019, what might be different? What would sound different?

KF: It would have been a very different album. Our old bassist, Ossian, was more of a punk guy, so there would have been a different bass sound for sure.

It might have sounded a bit less melodically intricate because guitars and bass were rewritten and refined a couple of times. That's probably the biggest difference.

It almost might have been less well mixed since we've gotten better at production, and our taste has evolved since then.
 

D: Here’s the obligatory question about influences. What screamo bands were you listening to in that 2016-2019 time? And which screamo bands, if any, were you listening to when you were finishing this album? Did your tastes change in that time and, if so, what effect might that have had on the final sound of the album?

KF: Jeromes Dream, mostly. It's our favorite screamo band, definitely. We've had the pleasure to see them twice live now—once in Gotheburg and once in Canada at New Friends Fest (NFF) in '24. Since we played our show at NFF the same day as them, we went backstage and shook their hands after they played their show lmao. It sounds corny, but, to us, it was like meeting Led Zeppelin, so we just had to do it.

Also saw Raein at NFF, which is a huge inspiration. Ran up after the show and talked about mic positions on the Stratocaster. They have such a lovely guitar sound, and yeah, I was like, Damn it's just Stratocasters on the neck position. I was stoked because that's also what I love. They're also very cool dudes and very friendly to nerds bugging them after the show about gear. It was cool and inspiring.

But to answer your question, I think our "schtick" is to try to not emulate anyone and have a unique sound, for better or worse. It's a lot of just plucking things out of the ether during song-writing time and going for it because we literally can't do anything else. Like, we really, really wanted our band to sound like very hard-ass normal screamo, but obviously we just can't do it!!! hahaha
 

D: Please talk about the lyrics to “Puddle Jumper.” In particular, I’m interested in this part: “And I’m accepting the fact that you’re never coming back / I’ve come out stronger.” And this: “Then it hits me that you want me to do better.” These lyrics are nuts.

KF: So, I had a best friend in University that got brain cancer and died unfortunately! It's what the Firedragon3651 song from the first album is about. This song is kinda like the final addendum to that whole experience. The dude's gone now for a while but he's still flowing through my fingers, helping me remember. And you gotta stay positive and move forward—that's the human spirit. 😊

Thank you to Kid, Feral, for taking the time.

I enjoy the album, starting with “Funeral in a Grocery Store,” which offers a furious start, a cathartic onslaught of noise and emotion. The bass guitar hits like a ram. The song includes backing harmonies and a few screams bordering on terror. I like the vocal at 53 seconds—“I don't want to die in a grave I dug with my own hands.” Oh, that deeply felt sense of alienation: "And sometimes I look out the window and everything's normal / It confuses me greatly / When will it all connect?"

“Medieval Poetry,” my favorite song, mellows at 29 seconds as the bass drum pulses under looping chords. The vocal strain against the earworm melody works because it contrasts with the rougher parts. This is the album’s most rhythmically consistent song.

On “2019,” Kid, Feral plays like it has a total lifespan under 15 minutes. The album’s long-ass song is “I Want to Be Your Canopy.” It’s almost two and half minutes!

My second-favorite song, “Puddle Jumper,” starts with guitar notes chiming out a sun shower of well-played pull-offs and hammer-ons. Naked self-deception and truth battle in the lyrics, “And I'm accepting the fact that you're never coming back / I've come out stronger / Love! It's stupidly strong / Tears! When they come / I'll try / Pain and loss can be so scary / I'll try / How can I even start to describe something as awful as you leaving." Then this baffling ending: "Then it hits me that you want me to do better / LOVE! / I want to live, so let's acknowledge these changes."

What choice does one have but to spin awful heartache into motivation?

 

 

Kid Feral released “2019” on May 29th, 2026, through the Oslo-based label Backpack Records. The album was self-recorded in the band’s rehearsal space and self-mixed and mastered.

 

Interview date: Aug 21, 2026

a review of a noise rock EP by Coilguns

I wrote about this band’s 2021 EP. Now comes “Peace Trader,” a new Coilguns single about testing a country’s values and you not seeing that most people don’t care to live up to them.

The song starts with an octave chord and quieted drums. At 10 seconds, the sound goes big, raw, and passionate. It feels like good Deftones. A few chords swing back and forth to screams of “Tell me, what have we done with our history of peaceful force? Yet, we still have hopes!” Then the bass and a guitar drop out, the intro is recalled—the octave chord and drums pushed back in the mix so the almost spoken message can be heard, "Still thought that our land would export dialog instead of weapons / Still naive enough to support what we thought was our main goal / International help and solutions for a solidar world / But you’ve traded it all and pretend to be forced now to cope."

Then the sound explodes again. The most effective part comes at 2:40 with a falsetto mourn followed by the realization, however fleeting, that "No one’s land here, but a place to die; we will mourn them all, we will mourn them all.” Then belief in life after death returns.

Unlike migration flows, Coilguns runs tight.

 

about a tired-sounding punk/hardcore band

Industrial Puke’s second album, “Alive to No Avail,” opens with a serrated guitar riff, then comes the whole shebang.

The band plows ahead with its volume-equals-good ethos and centers a maxed-out vocal. The loudest part is always the vocal—chorused layers of it parading machismo.

The Swedish band’s second full-length tries to squeeze a few more miles out of the sound first heard on its 2022 red-blooded crust EP, “Where Life Crisis Starts.” The whole thing was seven minutes. Soon followed the band’s full-length debut, 2023’s “Born into the Twisting Rope.”

I wrote about the first one, “Where Life Crisis Starts,” here.

The band insists on one speed, one volume, and one trick. Its monotonous sound stumbled across the finish line of that brief four-song EP.

It was okay then, as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far.

 

about the album "Camgirl" by Crippling Alcoholism

She's doing whatever you want. She recoils. Her injuries are minor. See her on camera sitting up suddenly, taking a moment, taking inventory. She's a new camgirl now—a girl drowning in the disappointment of being at center of another breaking metaphor. Watch her face and body. Do you picture every sad moment that happened in her life? Every step dad line up, every line up her nose? Why don't you picture that?

a review of an album by a guy who doesn't prioritize music

Longtime Brooklyn musician Brian Russ finally lets the music surface

Brian Russ has a family, a job, he coaches baseball—stuff that often comes with mature adulthood. But he found time to put this album together. He calls the project Hand Gestures.

Some people—maybe especially once they reach their 40s—try to be in the moment but also frequently find themselves thinking about the past and trying to relate it to now. That’s what happens in these simple little songs.

For starters, “Once it Starts to Kick In” is a simple little jam about opening up oneself to whatever good there is in whatever reality has become. The song includes an overdriven guitar that intrudes in a way that is at odds with the easy-going sound of the drums, acoustic guitar, and vocal. And mid-song, a little keyboard offers a toy melody that plays well with that overdrive.

Most of the album is like this: simple songs—songs that feel like they were already written, and Russ just had to channel them for himself.

Russ has been playing music a while. Check out the video “I’m Not Lying” by a band he was in, Backwords, posted more than 10 years ago. Man, that is a good song. The pining, the purity of the voice? Lovely. The loose composition and modest hi-hat tapping away the time. That oldie has a kind and rooted sound.

 

The Hand Gestures self-titled album will be released October 31, 2025, on Russ’s own label, Campers’ Rule Records. But today he needs to stop at Home Depot to get a spare key made and pick up some weed killer.

Notes: A lot generous, this review. I don't think Russ is even the singer for Backwords. That song was the main reason I wrote this.

another review, this time of a punk band from Sweden

Fast, dirty songs give you that little kick in the ass you need

Maybe try some fast living vicariously with Spøgelse and these speedy elbow-throwing songs. The Swedish hardcore punk band advertise a lifestyle of motion, momentum, and attitude.

Of course the first song is titled “Who Cares,” but it shortly introduces the band and singer’s confident, chin-out sound—“No, I don’t want that attitude, I don’t want to love you, No, I don’t need that shit from you, I guess I don’t.” It’s a good fuck-you of a song with fuzz-busted guitars and mind-made-up tempo. “Terrible Head” offers more of the same, but Spøgelse at least sound like they’re having fun.

The production throughout leaves instruments muffled and buried, for better or worse. And the drums, which run a little ahead of the rest of the band, sound buried under the distortion and noise.

Most of these songs are barely a minute long, but “Kick Them Where It Hurts” manages almost two and a half minutes of okay stuff, starting with a chunky little riff that beckons the rest to come jam. The song even makes space for some hot licks. The playing on this song outshines the vocal. Everywhere else, that voice is the album’s strength.

If you’re looking for a RIYL, it’s probably Motorhead. Listen to “East Coast Nightmare” and try not to hear that influence.

Spøgelse debuted with a self-titled album in spring 2023. This follow-up, “Spøgelse II,” came out via Welfare Sounds & Records on October 24, 2025.

an interview with a second- or third-generation 90s band

Dr. Martens never really went out of style

Ivory Daze, a shoegaze trio from Lincoln, Nebraska, just released a new EP, "Chlorine." Their sound is 1990s alternative guitar music—heavy, but not metal.

Guitar player and singer Isahen Harms took a moment to answer some questions.

Damon: Will these songs be on a full-length album?

Isahen Harms: No, these songs have always been meant for their own EP. We tried to make something cohesive even if it's coming in the form of a five-song EP.

Damon: The band promo material says, "With Chlorine, the band pushes further into the tension between chaos and melody, drawing from the best of 80s and 90s guitar music while carving out their own modern path." Why do you think you are drawn to music from the 90s? Why are the 90s influencing you now?

Isahen: There were just a lot of really good records put out in the 90s. Being a three-piece guitar, bass, drum, and vocal band, it's kinda hard not to take influence from that era of music. We still listen to and take influence from every era of music, though. Currently our guitar player is listening to Sade, our bass player is listening to Shallowater, and our drummer is listening to John Prine. We are kinda all over the place.

Damon: You sound a little like the band Hum. Are you familiar with that band? If so, what do you like about them?

Isahen: Yeah, we all like Hum. “You’d Prefer an Astronaught” is a great record. Lots of cool chords on that album.

Damon: What influences do you have from the 1980s? What elements specifically?

Isahen: We all like Duran Duran, Hall and Oates, Depeche Mode, Tears for Fears, The Smiths, etc. There was just a lot of good pop music being put out back then, and we take a lot of influence from pop music.

Damon: What is something you are afraid to say to someone you love?

Isahen: I slept with an ex's dad once. That was a rough conversation.

The new EP, "Chlorine," opens with “IV League,” a song that showcases the band’s strength—its rhythm section. A strong back beat pumps momentum. The vocal walks clean and pushes at the chorus.

In “Waco” I most clearly hear the 90s influences, like The Smashing Pumpkins and Hum, in two major ways. First, the chord changes and rhythms. The song recalls “Cherub Rock” right there in the open. Second, the band sounds big—big drums, velvety bass, fuzz guitars on overdrive and crunch, all in a full mix with good output. Heavy melody.

The best vocal on this EP comes on the single, “Corset.” The little Oohs and Yous make for a catchy vocal. It works.

 

The main things about The Smashing Pumpkins were probably the superb rhythm section, big guitar and production, and Corgan’s voice. Ivory Daze have a good rhythm section and big chords. The vocal is anonymous.

"Chlorine" was released October 17, 2025.

 

 

noise rock album reviews like this one

Takomaha winds up the air so it coils in your brain like a diamondback

When Takomaha turns up the volume on “American Basements,” feedback is already singing through the amps. The bass drum kicks, slipped by a hi-hat tap. A tumbling drum phrase articulates the tension welling inside a tooth-grinding bassline. And from this descends a vocal, clear and confident.

This musical introduction halts when the guitar suddenly rips chords into air already made humid and bright with noise.

When the scaffolding we've erected starts to fail, it makes this music.

The promotional copy compares it to This Heat, At The Drive In, and A Place To Bury Strangers. Takomaha debuted with a self-titled EP in 2022, and on October 29, the Oslo band will deliver its second, “American Basement,” on Loyal Blood Records.

The second song, “Scopekreep,” starts with cutting rhythms—drums and bass tumble over lovely dissonance scattered by the guitar. This music is about mood and intensity. The lyrics pronounce the mission: “Out here doing the Lord’s work / just out here doing the Good Lord’s work.” The monotone vocal rides the building volume. Then tension gives way, and the song transitions to a groove that again unfolds into a noise-rock crescendo.

The single posted below is “Tropical Slitwrist.” This eight-minute gunner opens with big dissonance, then steps back and up again with expulsions of sound. At 2:30, the bass and drums exact a tension-filled jam. But at 3:15, the song goes dark-dancehall electro and builds in volume. At 6:30, it bursts and the bass hammers. But this is brief, as the song drops back into the dark electro whatever. It finally moves toward closure at 7:30, cutting back and forth between the core synthesizer accents and the full noise machine.

a review of an album I liked—“Fear of the Plow" by noise rock band Haraball

Haraball make the raw, resentful sound of years squandered

Haraball deliver ugly defiance from the pulpit, and its hostage flock, having listened to the band’s unwelcome homily, so exhorted, have neither the time nor energy to hope for the best, for they expend their reserves steeling themselves for the worst.

Six years have passed since last we heard from Haraball, but this Norwegian noise rock band just released “Fear of the Plow.” The sound wears the spit of punk and hardcore and exudes a lack of reverence and dismal determination forged by life’s hard training.

Song structures are simple, but the music brims with texture and tension. For example, “The Squatter” stews in frustration. Having bottled it up too long, the lid bounces over the hiss.

And I like “Prison Cheese,” with its customary reverb and echo on vocals that pronounce and admonish, the bowling drums, the bass like a rolling slicer, and guitars full of subtle noise.

“Fear of the Plow” follows 2019’s “Hypno” and was released September 19, 2025, on the label Fysisk Format.

 

a short review of a lo-fi indie guy's singles

The single, "Homesick," is the latest in a string of low-key charmers

Lo-fi bedroom indie rock project Parent Teacher released the bruised single "Homesick" last month. Its melancholy opening—fresh strings chiming through the song's chords on an acoustic—is followed by tinny drums and a bass that's a little louder and grittier than you'd expect. With the school bell having rung, out comes the resigned but pure and melodically simple vocal: "I lied instead of being direct, my feels protected the disconnect."

The sound mix is a tad off, and I resisted at first. But after listening again and trying the two other songs released this year, the music grew on me.

Parent Teacher reminds me of Grandaddy, Ben Gibbard, and 22º Halo. This artist has a knack for melody and songwriting. Sound engineering and all that stuff can be fixed, but without the melody and songwriting, you have nothing.

"Homesick" is posted below, but I recommend trying "Capital Artist" and "Fire Door," too. They aren't all sad-guy songs. And—confession time—I like the raw, stripped-down clips of these songs ("Fire Door," especially) posted on his Instagram more than the released versions.

about a hard rock/metal band's debut (with a decent music video)

This band sounds like it will steal your tools

The band photo shows three guys wearing ugly masks, studded arm bracers, and chain mail as they pose, let's say, in the side yard of someone’s wood-shingled duplex in Nassau County, New York. With those costumes, you’d be forgiven for lowering your expectations. But Rotgut’s debut, “24 oz Cantrip,” features five songs of excellent, heavy rock n’ roll amped up with death metal, black metal, and thrash influences.

Opening song “Bonemelter” is fine—thick guitars with hot leads, bass and drums tight as hell, and good momentum.

But I took interest in the EP when I heard “The Hunger.” Rollicking from the first, the song’s fast thrash riffs burn amphetamine energy. This sounds like driving with your eyes closed, racing down the freeway shoulder, sending cars spinning in all directions.

“24 oz Cantrip” isn’t beer-bash partier thrash. Rotgut trends darker. The single, posted below, is “Return of the Dead Without Eyes.” Just get passed the group-shout chorus and focus instead on the splashy cymbals after 1:25 and thereafter as the song revels in black-metal-influenced passages. It wraps with beautiful patience at about 3:20 with an inspired payoff led by the vocals, “Blood of the maiden, blood of the priest, blood of the mason, blood of the thief / A beggar to Caesar, a flame to the cloth, sixes in triplicate, salt to the north / A clarion call to the dead without eyes to lead us to darkness and swallow the skies!”

I love the agile bass on this album. It's always on the offensive. It looms and lifts the whole composition.

The album goes by fast. The songs, each 3 or 4 minutes long, make for a loud and enjoyably intense listen. The music sounds a little like The Crown, Midnight, and, at a vast distance, Converge. The Seattle-based band self-released “24 oz Cantrip” on streaming platforms June 20th, 2025.

Those costumes are a fun, cheap way to get your attention. But this band’s sound deserves to hold it.

 

 

a quick review of a crossover punk band from Salt Lake City

Deathblow’s new EP offers more tall-guzzling thrash metal

I reviewed Deathblow’s three-song EP “Rotten Trajectory” in 2023. Those denim-and-high-tops songs sounded mosh-ready. The new EP, “Open Season,” tries to pick up where they left off.

The title track starts with some head-nodding hardcore, then steps into a fast punk-rock chord progression 40 seconds in. A textbook sound.

My favorite song is “Tormentor.” It attacks from the get-go with a rapid-picking riff. The song has a little of the old, nourishing energy heard in much of their 2023 release. And thrown in for the bargain is a hot little lead after the first verse.

But, man, the singer falls on his face trying to hit a high note at 50 seconds. I’d hate to hear the vocal tracks that didn’t make the cut.

The good news is “Open Season” includes some tidy thrash and punk compositions.

But the effort overall lacks inspiration. The music too often sounds rote.

The Salt Lake City band released the EP June 16, 2025, on Sewer Mouth Records.

a review of a Thirdface album

A second listen reveals the pleasures of this rush of raw, invigorating hardcore, noise rock, and metal from late 2024

I listened to this album last winter and decided to pass. Big mistake!

Thirdface’s “Ministerial Cafeteria” is beautiful savagery—slam-dance energy courses through body-blow rhythms and face-raking vocals.

I rescued my download of this album from the recycle bin after “Sour” played on some playlist. The song offers so much.

It’s the most measured and spacious song on the album. The bass guitar steps up, and a patient but hard-hitting beat stalks menacingly amid a claustrophobic guitar. The effect is a gross, dangerous tension.

But urgency and abundance power most of the songs. The exemplar is the groove-chewing “Pure Touch.” This fucker is exciting—a nearly perfect song with its ferocity and change-ups. A coiling guitar riff sounds like rock n’ roll under spittle-fly vocals. The song is part Dillinger, part Jesus Lizard. I also love the spastic, syncopated “Bankroll.” The song runs into a few danceable grooves, including a great harmonic-driven riff near the 1:20 mark.

The Nashville hardcore-punk quartet released “Ministerial Cafeteria,” its second full-length, on November 1, 2024, via Exploding in Sound.

I mean, don't most of us wish we were back in November 1, 2024?

a review of a death metal album that sounded pretty good

I'm not a death metal guy. It all kind of sounds alike to me. But "Ashen Womb," the latest album from Copenhagen's Phrenelith, immediately stood out.

The best part is the Mesozoic sound. It's so expansive. The band sounds charged and vicious, but the music's drama and ferocity are directed. Songs zig and zag with intention.

The bass fills out the bottom-heavy, beautifully echoed guitars that lay waste to all and sundry with drubbing riffs. Vocals, if you can call them that, belch from the dead's aching guts. And the drums attack from all directions, often building to where everything is cracking under the weight.

I wanted to learn more about Phrenelith, but the band did not respond to my interview request because they were too busy with other interviews, according to the public relations contact.

"Ashen Womb," released February 7 on Dark Descent/Me Saco Un Ojo Records, is Phrenelith's third album. The band debuted in 2017 with "Desolate Endscape" and followed up in late 2021 with "Chimaera." The songs on "Ashen Womb" are not unlike those on "Chimaera," but the new album just sounds better.

 

 

a review of an album by one of my favorite bands

Twenty years after its debut, City of Caterpillar released its sophomore album

City of Caterpillar's self-titled debut is one of my all-time favorite albums. Twenty years later, the band released its follow-up, Mystic Sisters.

In 2002, the band was discovering something new. In 2022, it was recovering something old.

"Thought Drunk" starts us off with spacey reverb-drenched guitars behind a menacing bass while tom drums conjure something primal, like war drums just over the hill. A chant falls in with the momentum. The vocal grows manic until singer-guitarist Brandon Evans cuts it off, spitting, "Heads sunk, thought drunk / I'm sick of singing fears / I'm sick of singing fears / I'm sick of losing years / I'm sick to fucking tears." I've always liked Evans's time and phrasing. Then the band stresses the struts with a four-minute noise-rock playout.

So many great debuts are marred by poor sound quality. City of Caterpillar's was. But Mystic Sisters sounds much better.
 

The band releases some tension with "Paranormaladies." Rocking, seesawing riffs impel vocals that somehow sound brash and paranoid: "There's something here / I asked for a sign / Flipped the page, saw old words I scribbled down from my mind—a prior time, with different intentions—they read, 'We'll be waiting for you, best believe that.'"

With the album's release, Evans said, "The band is always focused on mood ... To me, that's the most important thing. I don't really want people dissecting what we're trying to say, because it's not really about us. It never has been. What we cared about 20 years ago was innocent, raw emotion, and that's what we care about now."

The title track builds gradually. Soft, ghostly guitars and a few low-end piano notes haunt. At 1:35, a guitar theme develops. By the three-minute mark, it sounds like an Ennio Morricone hook. At 3:40, this cinematic song breaks from the theme, shifts key, and then builds to a crescendo. Urgency and tension grip tight at 5:10 until a brief reprieve at six minutes. Then the band jumps back in for the coda—

My birth, my death, my ancestors, my brothers, my wife,

My children in the light, mothers birthing this life,

My sisters who have no say

There's mystics in the air,

There's mystics in the air, there's mystics in the...

They're everywhere, everywhere

The guitar drips tension with choice notes softened by reverb to open the album's eighth and final track, "Ascension Theft ... (Gnawing of the Bottom-Feeders)." The notes begin to pool with feedback and noise, then spill as the mood intensifies with the spine-stiffening bass. Then meaty bass notes colossus-walk over hills and through valleys, maintaining perfect control. At 3:30, the song takes off and then triumphs with a bitter, defiant vocal—

Feed your face until it bleeds

For the rest of us it's fight or flight

Spiraling through the thievery

Pockets full of puddled blood

For the rest of us it'll be just fine

Spiraling through the thievery 

Mystic Sisters was released September 30, 2022, on Relapse Records. The band picks up where it left off, building worlds to journey through. It happened the way almost all late-career follow-up albums do: the band reunited for some shows and ended up recording. Is it as good as it was the first time?

Is it ever?

Note:

- A lot of great post-hardcore came out of Richmond, Virginia, in the late 1990s through the 2000s. In addition to City of Caterpillar, the scene produced bands like Pg. 99 (or pageninetynine), Darkest Hour, Enemy Soil, and, later, Majority Rule, Malady, and Pygmy Lush.

- I thought I published this on here 18 months ago.

a positive review of a technical death metal album

The band Pyrrhon began to drift apart during covid. Then they did something about it.

These songs will make you beg for just one moment of melody—anything to get a little oil into this gear-grinding machine.

But the grind is the theme of "Exhaust," the new album from NYC-based technical death metal band Pyrrhon.

If you feel burned out, Pyrrhon is right there with you. Vocalist Doug Moore says, "It's about the experience of being pushed beyond your ability to sustain things … It's a sense of constantly juggling things and never having a handle on them. That feeling became a big part of this record and the imagery."

"Exhaust" is us in this fucking cyclone of culture. The music channels the onslaught of content, the warping of technologies and time, and our politics of destruction.

The album itself, however, is a product of renewal.

Pyrrhon had just released its fourth album when covid hit. After 10 years of touring and crafting crazy-ass music, spending time apart became normal.

The guys began to worry about their partnership.

So they jump-started their band by gathering in May 2023 at a rural northeastern Pennsylvania cabin and taking mushrooms. Says vocalist Doug Moore: "We hadn't spent that much time together, and it felt like we were able to rediscover who we are and feel the energy of the collaboration."

Thematically the album may be about exhaustion, but the collaboration brought renewal.

Album opener "Not Going to Mars" bombards the wasteland of your attention span. The track is an aggressively chaotic work of rapid-fire snare drumming, dissonant guitar pull-offs, multi-personality vocals, and frequent part changes. It's a shock to the system. So goes the album.

Once I started wrapping my brain around the sound, the drums stood out. I noticed on "First as Tragedy, Then as Farce" how the bass guitar grinds with the drums. The syncopation, the precise, rapid execution and unity of the drums and bass are really something. The music represents a lot of talent and practice.

The album's first steady beat comes on "Strange Pains." Two songs stick out for me, and this is one. I can just imagine how this must hit live.

My other favorite is "Stress Fractures"—a song of sheer wall-climbing madness. The riff spirals up the fretboard as the bass pulls the rug and leaves the vocals gasping. This song exemplifies that "experience of being pushed beyond your ability to sustain things … of constantly juggling things and never having a handle on them."

Pyrrhon brings the creativity and sound of the previous four albums. "Exhaust" might even have a wider palette than 2020's "Abscess Time."

Songs like "Out of Gas" and "Last Gasp" slow the tempo. "Out of Gas" is a concussed brain-bleeder featuring a modulated bass effect, some silly razz-matazz drumming, and a spoken, taunting vocal. Notes ring out on "Last Gasp" and create a scary space that fills with exaggerated spoken vocals that ramble on until overcome by caterwauling guitars.

"Exhaust" suits the moment and a state of mind. Moore says, "We've been through a time of great uncertainty. I tend to get into my head about this stuff."