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 blackened sludge to bone-snapping deathcore.
D Bloc
RIYL Incendiary, God's Hate, Never Ending Game
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Detroit has a long history of tough-as-nails hardcore, and D Bloc are now a part of that legacy. Their sets at this year's Tied Down Festival and Cold as Life reunion fest were astonishingly violent, with hoards of proud locals piling on each other while barking along to the band's shin-splitting outpourings. Ass-beating music — Detroit style.
QUOTE "Detroit has one of the best and slept-on scenes in the world," says vocalist Cameron Good. "Of course everyone knows Cold as Life and Never Ending Game, but there are so many incredible bands both past and present that never get the shine that they deserved. That's why we rep it as hard as we do. When we do anything, we want the whole scene to know that they are a part of everything we're doing."
Melancholia
RIYL Thou, Full of Hell, Mizmor
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Melancholia are a hard band to describe. The two-piece band's music has the dark, cavernous quality of doom-sludge bands like Primitive Man and Thou, but their forthcoming debut, Book of Ruination, brings in a hearty dose of blackened grind. Singles "Caught in Eternity's Jaws" and "Yersinia in Bloom" are fast, nasty and miserablist, but also heavy and dense. It's good to be different.
QUOTE "The album as a whole is a rumination on the inequalities in the world and the growing existential threats we all face," vocalist-guitarist Gage Lindsay tells Revolver. Drummer Noah Burns adds: "I wanted to make something that encapsulated many of the styles we've tackled on previous recordings. Heavy, slow, very fast, etc. Also, [we] didn't want a contemporary 'metal' sound to the record. We used lots of natural atmospheric room sound."
Tracheotomy
RIYL Suicide Silence, Despised Icon, Oceano
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Old-school deathcore is having a big moment right now thanks to bands like Psycho-Frame and their Floridian contemporaries in Tracheotomy. The Palm Beach foursome will be bringing their MySpace-era brutality on the road with Left to Suffer later this year, giving breakdown fiends a hit of their no-nonsense take on the style — stripping back the production and tapping into the ferocity of early Suicide Silence and the Red Chord.
QUOTE "We believe we bring a refreshing attitude to deathcore, and remind people of what the genre sounded like 'back in the day,'" says frontman Simon Mariante. "But without it being too much of a 'nostalgia cash-grab.' We think deathcore needs more mosh parts and simple breakdowns with less vocals on them."
Mouth for War
RIYL Knocked Loose, Chimaira, Kublai Khan
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Mouth for War's name harks back to Pantera, but don't expect to hear any Nineties power-groove revivalism here. The Colorado band formed to blend "the essence of hardcore with a modern metalcore twist," and that's exactly what they do on their new album, Bleed Yourself. Their blunt-force hardcore assaults are buffed up with crushing production, which makes the whirring metalcore leads and uncompromising mosh parts hit that much harder.
QUOTE "The whole record, as was our last one, is about my sister who was killed in 2020," singer Trae Roberts says of Bleed Yourself. "In the new record, I had to dig into some buried emotions and and really bleed myself of some internal issues that I tucked away regarding my grief."
Trauma Ray
RIYL Smashing Pumpkins, Hum, Nothing
WHY YOU SHOULD CARE Heavy shoegaze in the vein of Hum and Nothing is the genre's most popular strain right now, and Trauma Ray are cutting through the noise.The band have a running bit that 300 guitarists play in their arsenal, and you might actually believe it after hearing songs like "Halley" and "Tracers" from their new split with Downward (another great band).
Making this specific style sound novel is tough to do right now, but Trauma Ray's gigundo guitar tones and hummable hooks enable their songs to leave a real impact on the ears. Crank it up loud.
QUOTE "We have a song titled 'Träumerei' and that's what our name was supposed to be when we started out," the band say in a joint statement. "One night when we were out drinking, we told that to a buddy of ours who was drunk as hell and he said, 'Oh, like a ray gun that shoots trauma? That's kinda sick.' And we just went with that instead."
