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 metal, hard rock and hardcore that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ. For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in a Spotify playlist, which will grow each week.
Sharptooth - "Say Nothing (In the Absence of Content)"
Baltimore-based metalcore group Sharptooth have been diligently working on the follow-up to 2017's Clever Girl, and this week the quartet dropped the new single from the forthcoming Transitional Forms. Frontwoman Lauren Kashan compares the new LP to a dinosaur (rad), saying, "Sonically, if Clever Girl was a Velociraptor, Transitional Forms is a goddamn Tyrannosaurus Rex." Judging from "Say Nothing," she's not exaggerating. Poking holes in "sex sells" culture and generic pop ("This is a song about nothing/Oh no, not a single thing), the cut is angry, gargantuan and bent on destruction. Best of all, though, Kashan has got something to say — try listening up, boys.
Behemoth - "A Forest" Feat. Niklas Kvarforth
Behemoth bandleader Nergal joined forces with Shining's Niklas Kvarforth for the second time this year (the first was in the former's blues-rock project Me and That Man), and to head-turning results. His main band's metallized cover of the Cure's 1980 post-punk classic "A Forest" is eerie, heavy and absolutely enthralling. It's not as if the blackened death-metal crew have ever stayed inside the box, but this breaks the damn walls.
Mrs. Piss - "Downer Surrounded by Uppers"
Friends don't always make the best creative collaborators, but with Mrs. Piss, goth chanteuse Chelsea Wolfe teamed up with her longtime pal (and recent go-to drummer) Jess Gowrie for a grungy, sludgy new project that defies expectations. The hazy, doom-laced single "Downer Surrounded by Uppers" is a short, sharp, two-minute blast that sees these ladies channeling "wild energies" for something nastier and gnarlier than Wolfe has ever been involved in.
Avatar - "Silence in the Age of Apes"
The Swedish heavy-metal troupe have left Avatar Country behind, and if this lead single off their forthcoming eighth full-length, Hunter Gatherer, is any clue as to their dark new sound and aesthetic, shit, bring it on. "Silence in the Age of Apes" is the hardest vocalist Johannes Eckerström has screamed and gurgled in over a decade, and that combined with the nonstop pounding beats, chugging riffery and signature guitar solos make this new era one to look forward to.
Left Behind - "Waiting for the End"
This vicious B-side from Left Behind's latest record, No One Goes to Heaven, had no reason to be left on the cutting-room floor. Thankfully, the Charleston, West Virginia-based band released the crusher this week, along with a hilarious Animal Crossing-inspired music video. Fittingly, for our age of quarantine, vocalist Zach Hatfield says the song is about missing out: "Whether it's missing the craziness of our older tours or missing out on things in my personal life because I'm gone it doesn't matter. The feeling stays the same."
VOWWS – "Impulse Control"
Australian-born/L.A.-based duo VOWWS make self-described "death pop," and their latest single, the moody, captivating "Impulse Control," more than lives up to that descriptor. With a twangy guitar line droning through the three-minute, inevitably crescendoing slow burn, Rizz and Matt James' latest goth foray captures the volatility and unease of our strange days, and does so with surreal beauty.
