Signed to Bristol’s Specialist Subject Records alongside UK emo staples such as Martha and Fresh and Toodles & The Hectic Pity, Soot Sprite are in great company and already boast a solid collection of material. Although Wield Your Hope Like a Weapon may have more polished production courtesy of Tom Hill, there are still enough lo-fi and shoegaze-adjacent qualities for this to be an enjoyable listen, whether you’ve followed Soot Sprite’s career so far or you’re a newbie.
Intro track ‘Days After Days’ discusses the ongoing album theme of trying to choose kindness and compassion whilst tirelessly navigating today’s increasingly hostile economic and political climate but despite the heavy subject matter, Elise Cook’s vocal style, (which is almost reminiscent of 2010’s indie and folk acts such as Of Monsters and Men and Cults) paired with fuzzy guitars and lo-fi, distorted production qualities, ‘Days After Days’ is a worthy introduction to the album and sets the tone of what’s to come perfectly.
The album is loud, brash, and undeniably polished, but beneath the glossy surface lies a creative well that feels scarily dry. The riffs, while competent in their own right, rarely move beyond the expected, and much of the record leans on recycled ideas dressed up in the same campy horror clichés that have dominated Wednesday 13’s work for decades. There’s nothing inherently wrong with playing to your strengths, but here it comes across as safe and predictable rather than confidently self-assured.
The album’s rare attempts at experimentation feel superficial at best. Moments that try to surprise, whether through sudden melodic shifts or genre-hopping nods, come and go without leaving any lasting impression. Instead of feeling fresh, these detours feel like distractions from an album that’s otherwise coasting on autopilot.
If you find yourself craving darkness, depression and despair in your music, it’s hard to go wrong with Ghost Bath. After four albums soundtracking a thoroughly bad time, you could be excused for wandering where can Dennis Mikula really take this vision now, and if his misanthropic brand of negativity really has much more to say. Thankfully there’s still so much life left in this project, and Rose Thorn Necklace is arguably the most ambitious release yet.
Merging the immediate despair and chaos of the singles already released, the title track and the brilliantly named ‘Well, I Tried Drowning’ with the more introspective, intense and inconsolable, but no less affecting tracks such as ‘Thinly Sliced Heart Muscle’ and ‘Needles’, listeners are presented with an album that not only deserves but demands attention, and repeat listens. The compositions are in a word, stunning, weaving black metal’s ferocity with post-rock’s emotional breadth in a way that feels both suffocating and transcendent. Each track unfolds like a cry into the void – raw, unfiltered, and dripping with a sense of genuine human suffering that’s hard to fake.
The sonic textures shift seamlessly between blistering aggression and haunting serenity, capturing the duality of pain and beauty in a way few bands can. Mikula’s vision remains uncompromising, yet there’s a newfound clarity in the songwriting—a sense that every anguished scream, every tremolo-picked melody, every moment of silence serves a purpose. Rose Thorn Necklace is not just an album, it’s an experience, one that drags you into the depths only to show you the fractured reflections of light still glimmering beneath the surface.
The Black Sea, famous for its depth and layers—Svarta Havet, Swedish for Black Sea—emulate this exceptionally. Where they differ from their namesake is in how their layers mix together, and they do it so well. On the surface, listeners are presented with a great example of modern post-hardcore in Månen Ska Lysa Dig Väg: breakneck speed and aggression meld with a spiritual softness, building tension until release. Dig deeper, though, and what the Finns have produced with their second full-length effort is something much greater than the sum of its parts. In its depths lies a tumultuous sea of emotion and sound, where patience and introspection are met with profound reward.
The Finnish ensemble, hailing from Turku, craft a sonic journey that intertwines the ferocity of post-hardcore with the bleakness of blackened crust, creating an album that resonates with both aggression and spiritual softness. The opening track, ‘Göm Dig’, sets the tone with a haunting introduction that envelops the listener in a haze of bittersweet ecstasy, only to be pierced by scorching screams and a poignant piano outro. As the album unfolds, tracks like ‘Djur’ and ‘Avgrunden’ delve deeper into themes of ecological despair and human-induced suffering, with ‘Djur’ presenting doomy undertones and atmospheric layers that evoke a sense of urgency and desperation.
Brighton punk duo Regal Cheer have unleashed their second album Quite Good. From Manchester Punk Festival to a co-headlining tour with Toodles And The Hectic Pity, the two-piece have firmly established themselves as ones to watch in the UK DIY scene.
The first line of opener ‘Cold Case’ serves as a manifesto for the record as a whole: a screech of guitar feedback before shouting ‘I don’t trust that you ever cared at all!’ It’s the soundtrack to a broken down relationship, one that you thought would be with you until the end. It’s regret and resentment echoing into the empty space where trust, love and loyalty used to be.
Quite Good builds on the shouty, scrappy sound of their first record Cans to create a sharper, more mature sound. It’s got a little more polish, but still has a fundamentally DIY sound. Like on their debut, guitarist Max Cleworth and Harry Menear share vocal duties, both of them sticking to a raw, quintessentially punk style.
The album is just shy of 20 minutes cover to cover, made up of a dozen bitesize ragers that are the perfect length for our social media-rotted attention spans. It’s a whistlestop tour through fuzzy power chords, bitter lyrics and relentlessly driving drums.
Indeed, The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been is one of the most highly-anticipated albums of this year. The singles encapsulated the musical flow in French, choirs that still tear us apart, and those rhythmic guitars that capture our hearts. But let’s dig a bit deeper.
The album artwork already sets the tone: between the disturbing rock statues and the water in between that divides itself in two, an awful path is awaiting us: either an entrance into the abyss. Or hell for that matter. The eponymous track, ‘The Darkest Place I’ve Ever Been’ strengthens that mindset.
Whispering softly: ‘Trapped in a cage made of fears, it’s all that I know, I designed it all, so I can’t leave, of all the places that I’ve seen and all the monsters in my dreams, it feels like the darkest place that I’ve ever been’, Florent Salfati sets us in the right mood. A feeling of danger is slowly intruding in the track, right before the piece’s instrumental doesn’t fall apart, getting us into that familiar metalcore from the Frenchmen. The idea of that opus finds itself here: the journey of a character going into the limbs of hell, perpetuating a physical and mental transformation.
It’s through this pattern that the serious work begins: ‘Creature’, first single by LANDMVRKS, out in 2024, features a rap part, completely in French, right before hitting us with a quick rhythm on a melodic and heartbreaking background. The symbolism is powerful: this creature is quite similar to the one we create deep inside us, destroying us from the inside while pursuing us throughout our life. Please, have a listen to ‘I turned into this creature’ or ‘I no longer feel ‘cause you took everything’ and have a look at the music video to understand it at its best.
