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 death metal, post-hardcore, rap-metal and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ. For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.
August Burns Red - "Ancestry" (Feat. Jesse Leach)
According to August Burns Red guitarist JB Brubaker, "Ancestry" is one of the "most painful and personal" songs singer Jake Luhrs has ever written, and it's easy to hear why. The lyrics are a frank and unguarded message to a paternal family member on his death bed who wasn't always a good person while he was alive. The knotty contradictions of that emotional situation are expressed through the band's raging-rising-falling metalcore signature, and Killswitch Engage's Jesse Leach stops by to offer his fiery support in the hook.
Backxwash - "NYAMA" (Feat. Pupil Slicer)
Backxwash has many talents. Shes' a cunning lyricist, a visionary producer, a spotlight-stealing rapper and a masterful curator with amazing instincts for picking collaborators of all kinds. For "NYAMA," one of the most intense cuts from her latest album, she called upon the U.K. mathcore mind-fuckers in Pupil Slicer to help cook up a blazing rap-metal cut. It's executed perfectly, as Backxwash weaves her intimate admissions into a fabric of chuggy noise and pained metal shrieks. Thoroughly awesome, and never awkward.
Squint - "Pig Pen"
Melodic hardcore's creeping back into the genre's zeitgeist, but the best of this new crop doesn't sound like Guerilla Biscuits, Bane, or whoever else you might associate with that sound. On "Pig Pen," St. Louis's Squint borrow the bottom-heavy grunge attack of a band like Drug Church, crank out hooky power-chord progressions and bark over the ruckus with vocals that are fringed with a cynical snarl. It's grab-the-mic-and-jump-around music, but it ain't no pile-on of Youth Crew earnesty. Feels good right about now.
Ingested - "All I've Lost" (Feat. Matt Heafy)
Trivium's Matt Heafy is a pretty collaborative dude, but these days, it isn't often that he does a song with a band as unforgivingly heavy as Ingested. Another song on the U.K. band's new album features Sven de Caluwé of Aborted, but Heafy matches that furious standard on "All I've Lost," adding his triumphant yells and deathly bellows into the band's savage concoction of blackened deathcore and English death-metal. Bang your goddamn head.
Destroyer of Light - "Darkshimmer"
Destroyer of Light have toured with Pallbearer and definitely recall the drone-y plod of Sleep, but a song like "Darkshimmer" is a helluva lot heavier than what you'd typically hear from a band in that ecosystem. The seven-minute trudger has mountainous riffs with bludgeoning guitar tones, and the vocals trade between a hellish death growl and a spacy, almost kinda gothy singing voice that makes for a clever contrast. "Darkshimmer" is a good name for this bad boy; it's obsidian and oddly pretty.
Nicole Dollanganger - "Gold Satin Dreamer"
For years, Nicole Dollanganger has been making creepy, fairy-tale goth songs with a doomy ambiance, but with the rise of artists like Ethel Cain, King Woman and Midwife, her music sounds more relevant now than ever before. New single "Gold Satin Dreamer" is a delightfully quixotic little ditty that floats like a ghastly Grouper song, drifting smoke-like into the ether as Dollanganger's muted coo's are pitched up and down with a Grimes-like playfulness.
