Here at Revolver, we're always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it's a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in hardcore, deathcore, post-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.
GEL - "Honed Blade"
New Jersey's GEL have been steadily building up a full head of steam with their self-described "hardcore for the freaks," delivering a searing split with Cold Brats less than a year ago and an explosive live tape in 2021. With their debut LP, Only Constant ,due for release next month, the band deliver a thrilling display of how versatile and intense their take on hardcore is with "Honed Blade." In less than two minutes, with plenty of room to spare, GEL balance no-frills, punk-rock power-chord punch with stomping, mosh-pit mayhem. Raw, punchy and catchy as hell, "Honed Blade" feels almost like three great songs in one.
August Burns Red - "Reckoning" (Feat. Spencer Chamberlain)
Metalcore long-haulers August Burns Red celebrated their 20th anniversary on tour last fall while giving fans the first taste of their 10th album, Death Below, via a pair of raucous singles. With their latest, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania group offer their most epic new anthem of the bunch. Rhythmically taut with stop-on-a-dime precision, "Reckoning" is a showcase for the band's sheer technicality, but it comes to a soaring climax with some guest roars from Underoath's Spencer Chamberlain. At over seven minutes long, it might seem like a lot on paper, but with so many thrilling moments packed in, it seems to blast by in half the time.
Grave Pleasures - "Heart Like a Slaughterhouse"
Formerly known as Beastmilk, Finland's heavy post-punk group Grave Pleasures have released two albums rife with gothic gloom and hooky new-wave songwriting. Arriving ahead of their first new release in six years, Plagueboys, latest single "Heart Like a Slaughterhouse" finds the band in fine form, carrying the eerie pall of early records by '80s U.K. legends like the Cure and the Chameleons while boosting it with a muscular rhythmic undercurrent. And while a goth-rock aesthetic has been steadily creeping into metal through bands like Unto Others and Tribulation, Grave Pleasures only hint at such a crossover, instead focusing on perfecting their supernatural graveyard shimmer.
Ov Sulfur - "Befouler" (Feat. Alex Terrible)
Ov Sulfur's "Befouler" is like being elegantly sandblasted in the face. The Las Vegas blackened deathcore band, whose debut album The Burden of Faith drops next month, have a brutal and menacing approach, but it's the ornate, gothic atmosphere that they weave around their unrelenting frontal assault that gives it the coup de grace. Ricky Hoover's clean vocals lend the chorus a dose of heroism, but it's immensely satisfying when Slaughter to Prevail's Alex Terrible joins in on their everyday-is-halloween pummeling.
Judiciary - "Knife in the Dirt"
Few bands in hardcore right now deliver a sound as relentlessly heavy as Judiciary do, and it's pretty easy to imagine more than a few injuries being sustained while listening to "Knife in the Dirt." The Texas group's latest scorcher features some of their most skin-peelingly sharp riffs, while vocalist Jake Collinson serves up a host of threatening barks: "I am! A walking! Aberration!" But it's not until the final minute, when Israel Garza and Kyle Calfin descend into a dizzying guitar spiral, that a good roughing up truly becomes a bloodying nightmare.
Ohhms - "Blood Feast"
Kent, U.K. sludge metal group OHHMS are a productive bunch, having released five albums in the span of seven years. But there's nothing workmanlike about the menacing churn of "Blood Feast," the latest dispatch from their upcoming sixth album, Rot. With guitars like thick slabs of red meat, "Blood Feast" rides the line between noise-rock misanthropy and prog-rock intricacy, like KEN Mode borrowing some of Astronoid's best tricks. Ultimately, though, this song is about the band's textural abrasion and uneasy tension, which comes to a boil in its climactic coda.
