Here at Revolver, we pride ourselves in living on the cutting edge of heavy music, from metal and hardcore to industrial and hip-hop, and we try to keep you on the front line, too, by giving you a deep look at the innovative noisemakers poised to shape the sound and the scene.
To that end, we've rounded up a handful of musicians who, we think, are on the rise across several different genres. From scorching screamo to "over-the-top" deathcore, here are five artists you'll want to get on now.
Johnny Booth
RIYL Every Time I Die, Glassjaw, Northlane
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE No, Johnny Booth isn't your local pirate impersonator — they're one of the fastest-rising metalcore bands on the circuit. Although they've existed since 2006, it wasn't until 2019's Firsthand Accounts that they earned some legit buzz, and now their brand latest album, Moments Elsewhere, is exploding — for good reason. They play a breed of gnashing metalcore that melds the chaos of Every Time I Die or Converge with the moody cleans and warped electronics of a contemporary post-hardcore act. Get onboard.
QUOTE The band's name is a bit out-there for a metal act. Here's the story. "When we started writing music for this project, we were young and just wanted to play keg parties around town," the band explains. "To us, 'Johnny Booth' was just the name of some edgy random dude you might meet at one of those keg parties — a name you wouldn't ordinarily associate with a heavy band. The name didn't really matter at the time, but now we're locked in."
Roman Candle
RIYL Converge, Touché Amoré, Loma Prieta
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Screamo is an ever-active yet insulated scene, but Roman Candle might be the next band to break out of it. Hailing from Las Vegas, the group started as the continuation of singer Piper Ferrari's old band, sowithout, and their 2022 EP, Discount Fireworks, has the makings of a serious crossover. Clever guitar noodling, mesmerizing drumming, huge dynamics and Ferrari's deeply felt shrieks. It's as scorching as it is emotionally gripping.
QUOTE "Raw, abrasive, honest," is how Ferrari wanted Discount Fireworks to sound. "We don't go into the writing and recording process with the intent of making pristine albums. It was important the album sounded like what we were going through. The execution itself needed to reflect the vibe of the music. Writing/recording vocals and getting brutally honest with ourselves during that process feels almost more like an exorcism. But that's the point. This is art. This is our outlet."
Asinhell
RIYL Entombed, Death, Bolt Thrower
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE After Volbeat singer Michael Poulsen's dear friend, Entombed frontman L-G Petrov, passed away, the Elvis-metal crooner was inspired to revisit his death-metal roots, which he first explored in his pre-Volbeat band Dominus. Enter Asinhell, a new extreme-metal powerhouse where Poulsen supplies the riffs and ex-Morgoth screamer Marc Grewe howls over them. It's a tribute to Poulsen's love of old-school death-metal pioneers like Entombed, Death and Autopsy, and a worthy one at that.
QUOTE "Even though some fans from the Dominus days think I may have been hoping Volbeat would eventually turn into a more death-metal band, that wasn't the reason I formed Volbeat," Poulsen says. "When I write death-metal riffs, some of it finds its way into Volbeat, but full-blown death-metal songs just don't belong there. That's why I formed Asinhell — it's a different kind of animal that brings a different kind of excitement when I write."
Destiny Bond
RIYL Minor Threat, Hüsker Dü, Rites of Spring
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE There's something about the sound of 1980s hardcore that goes beyond crummy recording quality and sub-par equipment. There was an unbridled energy, a spiritual looseness to that era of music that very few modern bands can accurately replicate. Destiny Bond pull it off. Their new album, Be My Vengeance, culls from a variety of influences — a little bit of Revolution Summer melody, some SST-core experimentation — to create something that makes most modern hardcore records (even the best of them!) sound rigid by contrast. At its best, punk and hardcore can be poetic. Destiny Bond achieve that — and they fucking rip.
QUOTE "We wanted to recreate the urgency and energy from the Eighties hardcore and mid-to-late Seventies punk records we love, while not being afraid of a full-sounding record," the bandmates say of their approach to Be My Vengeance. "Obviously, [producer] Jack Shirley — Deafheaven, Gouge Away — is the master of recording punk music live while retaining tremendous quality. He fit the vision for the record perfectly."
Tactosa
RIYL The Acacia Strain, Suicide Silence, MySpace-era deathcore
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE The members of Tactosa aren't old enough to have been around for deathcore's take-off in the late 2000s (the average age of the band is 22), but they sound like they were. The Florida newcomers just dropped the fantastically brutal Exit Wounds EP, which takes the opposite route that symphonic breakdown cinematographers Lorna Shore and Brand of Sacrifice are treading. The songs are heavy and raw. Not flashy, but not caveman levels of simple, either. Songs like "Dead Pacifist" and "DIY Autopsy" (great names, BTW) will make you bedroom-mosh like a freak. No wonder their idols in Dying Fetus are taking them on tour this fall.
QUOTE "Deathcore is such a wide genre now with so many different sounds," vocalist Kyle Weeden comments. "For us, we really loved one key aspect of deathcore when we were kids: How over-the-top it was in every way. It was fast and fun, with ridiculous lyrics you'd yell at shows and see printed huge on the backs of shirts. We never thought of ourselves as a revival of anything. We just aimed to focus on what we view as key tenets of the genre."
