Playlist for May 6 – 12, 2024

Quick playlist highlights:

– Kicking the playlist off with this insane track from Synestia and Disembodied Tyrant‘s split EP. The breakdown at the end of this song is ridiculous.

– Falling In Reverse has a new single that features Alex Terrible (from Slaughter To Prevail) and TechN9ne. Everybody loves to hate Ronnie Radke, and rightfully so, but his singles are super catchy. They’re a guilty pleasure for sure. I mean there are definitely some tryhard moments that don’t land perfectly, but I will absolutely take this over the super safe, generic metalcore being pushed these days. I have a lot of thoughts on this, but I’ll save them for my first ever Falling In Reverse review – the new album is scheduled to release on July 26.

– Dance Gavin Dance already has two new singles with Andrew Wells as the clean vocalist which seems to cement their intention to have him fully replace Tilian. The songs are solid – Andrew is a great vocalist. That being said, I want him to embrace his own style and move DGD into a new era. The band won’t be successful if they try to mimic Tilian’s vocals because they’ll never be able to recreate that magic.

– As expected, the new album from Knocked Loose is killer. There’s been a lot of discussion about “Slaughterhouse 2” because it’s a follow up to a Motionless In White song. There’s a lot of hyperbole in conversations about it as people claim it’s either the best or worst song on the album. I’ll get into more detail in my upcoming review, but I think the difference in opinion comes from one key fact – Slaughterhouse was a sick song because it came from Motionless In White and featured Bryan. It helped MIW return to their glory days in terms of heaviness. But Slaughterhouse 2 isn’t as impressive when it’s the most basic, straightforward song on the album and sandwiched between other incredible Knocked Loose tracks.

– Like Moths To Flames‘ new album is also very good. Chris’ screams have become so evil. LMTF has always been a “darker” metalcore band, but they really leaned into it on this album.

– Secrets announced the departure of their longtime singer (and only remaining original member), Richard Rogers. He’s been replaced by David Baqi, the vocalist of a very small band called Takers Leavers. Interestingly, this new song doesn’t have any singing at all, which is a weird move after announcing a new singer. I have to admit that I stopped caring about Secrets after they replaced Aaron Melzer with Wade in 2015, but Wade has gotten better at screaming and this might be the best song Secrets has released in the last nine years.

– I’m looking forward to reviewing the new Dealer album. Long story short, I like this way more than Alpha Wolf’s last record.

– Mortal Reminder is going to make waves when they release their debut album on May 17.

– Pincer+ has a new song that is very angry with someone…and isn’t that artwork kind of similar to Dealer’s? I wonder if the fact that Pincer+ was created by a former member of Dealer might be relevant. Obviously. See the drama section for more beef.

– Vulvodynia debuted their first song with their new screamer. They had to kick out Duncan Bentley, their longtime frontman, due to “recurring uncontrollable violence” and allegedly attempting to kill their drummer. I remember seeing the hospital pics and it was pretty gnarly.