Canada. Also known as America’s hat, its the home of maple syrup heists, bagged milk and a surprisingly rich and fertile hardcore scene. With the most obvious exports being Counterparts and Comeback Kid, bands like Rust and Reality Denied have been the frontrunners of an incredibly exciting underground scene for the last few years. Take The Crown are one of the newer faces on the block, having formed about a year ago and consisting of a ragtag bunch of musicians who’ve all cut their teeth in various bands over the years.
Blending the pummelling, pit teasing intensity of hardcore with metallic chops and more than a few massive hooks, Take The Crown take influence from the more obvious Hatebreed and all eras of the down under boys Parkway Drive, to lesser known but no less influential groups such as Desolated and Degrader. There’s an undercurrent of maliciousness in the music, as if goading the listener to letting it seep into them, to start having a disregard for those around you.
The indie pop/punk crossovers take approximately 20 seconds before pointing their first finger on opener ‘Summer Bodies’, setting the tone for a record stacked with both whit and truth. Vocalist Lily Rae sounds almost morose as she exclaims “summer bodies are made when you hate yourself”; her outlook on the social media trend doesn’t become any more optimistic from there. It does however surround itself with a sumptuous, looping bass line that makes every declarative aimed at her target undeniably infectious.
Similar to how The Menzingers are able to take the lyrically misery inducing and make you beat your chest while you bellow every word, Fightmilk often juxtapose the topic with its backdrop. ‘Back From Tour’, a detailed depiction of the damage distance can cause to a relationship, has absolutely no right to be as heartwarming a listen as it is. And yet, the second Alex Wisgard lays down his summer-time, peak Two Door Cinema Club pick riff you’re transported to euphoria. That’s not to suggest there’s a denialism at play though, Rae spends the tracks’ bridge gorgeously bellowing “it shouldn’t be this tough, if it’s something that you love” it’s effortlessly great, and will hit home with, well, everyone?
Vicarage have been around since 2018, but only released their first single three years ago – almost to the day – on November 18th 2021. Since forming, they’ve been on five UK tours alongside acts like Grove Street, Ingested and Death Before Dishonor, as well as joining the queercore duo Death Goals on their 2023 album release tour. Having only put out a sum total of seven songs so far, with two of those being singles off of this very EP, they’re already making some waves and will make far larger ones upon Perfect Hatred‘s release.
Their blend of blackened hardcore has come together in a perfect storm on this EP, with a surprisingly cohesive format of a lengthy opener into three more compact tracks that flows like a release made by a far more seasoned band. The atmospheric elements serve to give the listener an uncomfortable chill up the spine and across the shoulders, before sharpened guitars and caustic vocals run a stampede across your eardrums and the abyssal bass tone combines with the crushing drums in a wave of sound that’ll knock the doors off of a barn at twenty paces.
Certain emotional responses cannot be tapped into voluntarily, it takes harsh life events thrust upon you to overwhelm you with emotions never felt before. A place to channel becomes a critical crutch for you make sense of it all. Through the painful loss felt by Still guitarist Fraser Biggs during the loss of his father A Theft was created and its harrowing nature is an unforgettable experience.
All consuming in its bleakness, A Theft is a haunted black and white painting with horror writhing beneath its surface. Desperately clawing at the speckles of light which flash from gazing eyes creating a hugely unsettling and unforgiving atmosphere. It begins with whirring drone to leave you on edge before it attacks with blistering force. The first immediate onslaught comes in ‘Only Time Will Tell’ where The guitars are panic stricken and the cymbals rattle with ferocity, leaving the vocals to desperately glide over the top like an unforgiven spirit. It would be easy and lazy to put Still in just the post-black metal category, swathes of extreme and too often there is a celebration of avant-garde arrangement throughout the album for them to categorised as solely one form of metal. Bands like Ulcerate and Plebeian Grandstand have clear influence here in the world of the weird and wonderful heavy music. The creation of A Theft‘s brand of heaviness is one similar to the likes of Amenra where the tension is built from more than just the core instruments, emotion and suspense are crucial storytellers leaving imaginations riddled with anxiety. The minute long pseudo interlude ‘Oscillate’ is a brief but crucial chapter with its unsettling drone from the cello gives way to a crushing bellowing howl and galloping blast beats to give a sense of unpredictability in the albums emotion and arrangement.
At first glance mysterious Manchester based producer Overrider may find a comfortable place amongst countless other electronic music creators, with groovy breaks and R&B inspired samples putting themselves in the spotlight from the get-go. On closer inspection however, sophomore album Sparse Vector has more in common with artists like Three Trapped Tigers or Adebisi Shank than any of the landfill EDM DJs that pollute the UK’s nightclubs.
While most of the post/math-rock crowd would typically turn their noses up at a producer such as Overrider, the same fans would be thrilled to hear of former Cleft drummer John Simm’s involvement in the project. Mashing together fast-paced, glitchy breakcore with math rock and shoegaze, tracks like opener ‘Tokyo 3’ give both Overrider and Simm space to explore with tight percussion cutting through chunky distorted guitars and scratchy, futuristic synths. Marking themselves as the thinking man’s electronic music producer, Overrider embraces their nerdier side while still providing some incredibly danceable beats.
Referencing everything from The Mars Volta to Atari Teenage Riot to DJ Hazard, Overrider fly through their ten tracks of progressive, jagged guitar-driven beats without any regard for ordinary genre conventions. Tracks like ‘Black Wings’ and ‘Fracture’ lean into some of the project’s more aggressive tendencies, relying on brutal distorted guitars mixed in with the rapid drums and eclectic samples. Despite sharing plenty of sounds with underground raves and seedy clubs, Sparse Vector would far sooner find an audience at Arctangent than at Boomtown.
Thank, or more formally, The Rock Band Thank from Leeds sit somewhere between the sludgier side of the UK’s punk scene, and the post punk that has scene outposts in every city. Neither of these sides particularly have a love for synths like the band does.
I Have A Physical Body That Can Be Harmed is Thank’s second album and first on new label Big Scary Monsters. New labels can mean taking a step more mainstream, but the album comes rawer in production and more intense in instrumentation. The songwriting and arrangement are more focused, and although there are big hooks – 31/26/practical ways to prepare for the rapture from ‘Perhaps Today’ will get lodged in your head after hearing it – album opener ‘Control’ and ‘The Spores’ have a slower build into a frenzy over the immediacy of some of the albums “pop hits.”
Talking of the album’s pop hits, single ‘Woke Frasier’ has the trademark misanthropic lyrics – Fraisier has gone woke. There are no punchline bars, but the humour is obvious, without falling into the trappings of preaching to the choir. There is no wait for applause, and it doesn’t make previous album single ‘Good Boy’ hypocritical. It takes a lot of nerve to be able to commit to lines and sell them straight, with no sarcasm, and not having it come off as endorsement or cliche.
