Post hardcore

2019 Albums

Album Review: Toluca – Soras 8.3 (Post Black/Screamo)

November 13, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

This year has been incredible and if you’ve been reading for a bit now then you’ve seen me become increasingly excited about metal over the course of 2019. I was starting to think it may slump then I started getting some really good submissions from very talented bands putting out music towards the end of the year. Death Metal, black metal and hardcore have been insane this year and so has sludge but until today I didn’t realise I was missing something that I fondly remember having last year – A solid and true to form post hardcore album in the visage of bands like Boss-De-Nage or Birds In Row. Toluca offers an experience equally eloquent and abrasive from the lands of Russia with their new album Soras. Out November 29th via Tokyo Jupiter Records. […]

Mathcore

Live Shots: Blind Girls @ Crowbar Brisbane 27/09/19

September 28, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

A real nice surprise to find on a doom lineup, Blind Girls really stood out and I’m going to be seeing them whenever I can. Another local band with a cassette! again, if anyone has it and wants to sell/trade… I don’t know any bands like this in the area but it is exactly my jam. In the future I will be up front early for this one. I’m lucky I was able to even get the photos I got with the amount of people at the barrier. It’s primal af and perfect for my short attention span. […]

2018 albums

Esoteric Tape: Sullest – Fashionable Male 8.7 (Hardcore/Pop Punk)

September 25, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

I’m just too excited. It’s hard to write this review while or immediately after listening to this record because there is so much going on here and I react in very different ways to all of it. This is a tape sent to me courtesy of Tor Johnson Records when I ordered Cyttorak’s EP I reviewed earlier this year here. I’ve ordered from them a couple times now and it’s always great, cheap as chips as we say in Australia. Their bandcamp discog is 3.25 USD. The tapes are like 2 – 6 bucks a pop at the most and it’s always the strangest and actual esoteric stuff (what I’m all about baby). This is Sullest and their tape Fashionable Male. An adventure into hardcore pop-punk. […]

2019 Albums

Double dose: A Constant Knowledge Of Death – Vol III. Part A & B (Post Hardcore)

July 26, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

ACKOD is a very unique project that somehow exists between the void of minimalism and the bravado of extreme metal – not so surprisingly, out of California (partly), recorded at . It’s complex and brooding. It’s also likely to challenge a lot of people whose idea of music is more neatly packaged and familiar. Personally I find it quite exciting because it’s a part of a sound that doesn’t belong to a time in music but rather one that pops up here and there throughout it’s history like a rare breed. Stuff like Maudlin Of The Well if anyone can remember an underrated project from so long ago. ACKOD have come to 2019 with two releases and two more on the way. All of these releases are following the same story thread started with their first release in 2015, Vol. I: Enculturation and then Vol. II: Organic Emotions in 2016. 

These two 2019 albums in particular are quite special, not only as a return for the project but also their collaboration with artist ma-ko (@drivemeawaytroubledheart) on both album covers, really elevating the presentation of the project. ma-ko’s art has been on my feed for some time, I completely adore their style which to me seems very inspired by video game fantasy, I have a feeling these covers had some inspiration from Hyper Light Drifter but their other work on IG speaks to older JRPG’s with a beautiful and traditional aesthetic. The lyrics seem to come from the same place as the art, perhaps there was synergy there. The stories resemble the volatile societies, history and politics of such fictional places.  So let’s get into these two albums and keep an eye out for the third. […]

2019 Albums

Album Review: Archivist – Triumvirate 10 (Post Metal)

June 29, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

The raw emotion and peaks from the debut LP returns here in a big way, the goosebumps are back. The third and most recent album from Archivist offers a continuation of a running story, what appears to be a story of macro transformation. Look at the artwork (all by Alex CF) and you can see the transition from human, to machine and now to some kind of cosmic being no longer resembling a humanoid at all. The lyrical themes have followed the same transition, from emotional struggle of humanity, to the mechanical malady and now finally the emotional weight of the cosmos and confronting god. Perhaps a man made god, a literal and physical manifestation of the idea made real through circuits and programming. As always these are my own ignorant interpretations based on no research, something I like to do as an exercise. […]

Carcassbomb's Reviews

Album Review: Archivist – Construct 8.9 (Post Metal)

June 29, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

Immediately I’m hearing some differences from their debut LP. Namely the posthardcore direction I mentioned seems intensified with Construct. Certainly not a bad thing but the faster more chaotic opening didn’t quite have the effect of the delicate creeping opener on their self-titled LP. The cleans also come in much earlier and often. As the album progresses I get a sense of the hardcore side of things being upped a bit which I am all for. There’s less of the black vibe and more of the heart-wrenching cracking voice you expect from Birds In Row. When the death vocals come they tend to be used to accentuate the heavier moments by intensifying the deeper vocal range closer to GOOD metalcore/mathcore than black metal. I feel they are a lot heavier now. […]

Carcassbomb's Reviews

Album Review: Archivist – Archivist 10 (Post Metal)

June 29, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

It started so quiet and gave me little idea and yet I felt oddly emotionally attached to the artwork during this time, which intensified as the calm guitar came in. Still not giving anything away. Then the first punch of the record… the vocals, I love these vocals. It reminds me so much of early hardcore/mathcore like Botch in a lot of ways, it’s not a typical death/black vocal. It emotes more and takes his time with each lyric – Something else I’ll have to discuss because there’s some depth to the words. Currently I’m reading The Southern Reach Trilogy (First one, Annihilation, became a lesser film), so these science fiction themes tied to dramatic events and emotions really resonates at the moment. The consideration of the ideas and then the execution, there’s a lot of levity here. This will serve as suitable preparation for their newest release. […]

2019 Albums

Album Review: Secret Band – LP2 9.1 (Post Hardcore)

April 20, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

Secret Band is the heavy side of Dance Gavin Dance and their first LP in 2014 reflected that more accurately. This LP marks their departure from that context as they develop a more unique metal orientated sound. The Metal Archives will have a hard time not accepting Secret Band after this one. I won’t go into the background with DGD, Will, Jon, Eric, Acceptance Speech and Happiness again, you can suss out my first review to read that stuff. […]

Carcassbomb's Reviews

Album Review: Secret Band – S/T Full Length 8.3 (Post Hardcore)

April 20, 2019 Noob Heavy admin

These guys represent the under appreciated side of Dance Gavin Dance, the core of the sound the exists without Johnny or Tillian that draws from metal and older post-hardcore/metalcore influences. This record is Jon Mess’ vocal playground where we get to hear just how versatile DGD’s unclean vocalist can be with his unique sound. As far as my appreciation of DGD, the guitars are what always carried their tunes through and the unclean vocals from Mess were some of the clearest and expressive screaming I’ve heard. The success of the Justin Timberlake-esque vocalist in the mix is what spawned a million imitation bands and changed the definition sound of post-hardcore, it became a theatrical farce more than poetry and catharsis. It was a nice sound for a couple of albums but after the whole scene replicated it, it lost its charm and became the standard. For an older fan it sucks watching them live and just seeing these guys who look like they have STD’s in their hair, air humping along to lyrics about love, facing a crowd of underage girls. That’s the side of DGD I can’t fucking stand, and so here is SECRETBAND – the anti-thesis to Isles & Glaciers. Similar to Fear Before and The Tony Danza Tap Dance Extravaganza. […]