Weekly Update #9 – March 17, 2024

FEATURED ALBUM
Distant // Heritage
Released: February 10, 2023

I saw someone on Twitter describe Distant as “colossal deathcore” and it’s stuck with me ever since. The whole ensemble is larger than life and Alan Grnja is an incredibly exciting vocalist with an unbelievable vocal range.

Distant is a relatively new band, but they’ve been pumping music out for the last five years and have quickly made a name for themselves. Most importantly, Distant is forging their own path while others chase trends.

Distant offers a hyper evolved style of pure deathcore. In terms of other established bands, I’d put them in the same category as Oceano and To The Grave. There’s massive soundscapes and subtle moments of world-ending atmospheres.

Obviously Distant is a ridiculously heavy deathcore band, but they have some really cool metalcore-esque sections as well. The start of “Paradigm Shift” has some Alpha Wolf attitude and the last 30 seconds sound like Sleep Waker in their prime. I’d love to hear more of this style in the future.

“Argent Justice” isn’t necessarily my favorite song on the album, but it is certainly a highlight.  Featuring 16 heavy hitting guest vocalists from bands like Angelmaker, Carcosa, Bodysnatcher, Suicide Silence, Paleface, and Emmure, it’s a ton of fun to hear so many talented vocalists weave their unique styles together.

I can definitely see a future in which Distant becomes a titan of the genre.

Playlist of New Songs

Quick playlist highlights:

– Vended is basically the new-era Slipknot – which makes sense because their vocalist is Corey Taylor’s kid and their drummer is Clown’s kid. I can’t help but hear Slipknot when I listen to Vended, but I don’t mind because Slipknot has been terrible for the last ten years. It’s kind of poetic that their kids are keeping Slipknot’s sound and energy alive.

– Erra‘s new album comes out on April 5. They had my favorite album in 2021, but it doesn’t seem like they have as much hype this time around. We’ll see if they really grab me like they have in the past.

– Convictions is sounding a little like Hollow Front here. Really nice mix of melodies and heaviness.

– Immortal Disfigurement is CJ McCreery’s new band (ex-vocalist of Signs of The Swarm and Lorna Shore). This is one of the few Lorna Shore copycats that I tolerate because CJ was part of Lorna Shore when they switched to this style. Not sure if they’re putting together an album or just dropping singles, but each one has been pretty cool.

– Half Me continues to impress. They came in at #22 on my top 100 albums list for 2023. Their vocalist has a distinct sound and the energy is great.

– Imminence has a really cool sound. I don’t listen to them often, but their overall vibe is pretty epic. I just wish they had heavier sections more frequently.

DRAMA – More Copycats

Building off of last week’s discussion concerning Bring Me The Horizon potentially ripping off Moodring, I wanted to take this chance to highlight some other interesting copycats.

For complete transparency, almost all of the examples I’m about to share were first pointed out by other people responding to a tweet that has since been deleted. Instead of posting the tweets, I’m going to embed the YouTube videos and provide timestamps of the copycat parts for posterity’s sake (in case the other tweets get deleted).

This Recon clip inspired one of A Day To Remember’s most famous breakdowns. Start at 1:46 of Recon’s song and then listen to 2:37 of A Day To Remember’s song.

And do you know what’s even more insane? A Day To Remember copied Recon a second time! Start at 2:17 of the Recon song and 0:49 of A Day To Remember’s song.

This next one is a little tough to hear because Asking Alexandria’s “oh my god” scream fills the gap, but compare 2:57 from this Killswitch Engage song to 0:32 of this Asking Alexandria song.

Check out the similarities between 2:26 of Kublai Khan and 2:07 by Knocked Loose.

My main contribution that I didn’t see anybody mention would have been 1:06 of this Bring Me The Horizon song and the start of this song by The Ghost Inside.

Next, listen to the start of this Saosin song and compare it to the start of one of Sleeping With Sirens’ most famous songs.

The Callous Daoboys (a pretty sick new band) even poked fun at themselves, saying “This is our most blatant one.” Listen to 2:08 of this song from The Dillinger Escape Plan and compare it to 0:50 from The Callous Daoboys.