Weekly Update #42 – March 2, 2025

FEATURED ALBUM
Warspawn // Immaculate Objection
Released: February 21, 2025

What a ripper. This requires a bit of background knowledge so bear with me.

In 2022, a band called Vatican released an album titled ‘Ultra.’ It was a bit different from their previous music, but it was getting a lot of hype. Despite the attention, Vatican broke up without making a statement. Their vocalist even responded to a Reddit thread and confirmed the situation by saying the break up is “not hush hush, but [there will] probably [be] no statement from [the] band account.” And that was the end of it – Vatican died a silent death.

Interestingly though, in the immediate aftermath, many of Vatican’s members, including its two former vocalists, created a new band called Psycho-Frame. I featured them in a recent newsletter, and they’re one of my favorite modern deathcore bands.

Psycho-Frame has been killing it during the last few years, but unfortunately, two months ago, they announced that one of their vocalists (Jonathan Whittle, Vatican’s original vocalist), is stepping away from the band because he can’t tour full time. It’s great that Psycho-Frame is rising through the ranks, but it’s sad that they’ll have to do it with a slightly different line up.

Not to worry though, this recent split is what helped create Warspawn. Jonathan Whittle is on vocals and he’s joined by a few other Psycho-Frame members. Critically, Hunter Young, the person responsible for the insane production and composition of Psycho-Frame and Moodring is also a part of Warspawn.

It’s honestly hard to keep track of everything each member is involved in. Psycho-Frame’s other vocalist is also the vocalist of Church Tongue, and they just put out a really good metalcore EP. The whole thing is incestuous. The core members are absolutely phenomenal and their range of talents can’t be expressed through a single band so they splinter off and create these incredible side projects.

Looking closer at Warspawn specifically, this is a vicious EP. Whittle’s higher screams are like a serrated blade slicing through the fast paced instrumentals. They’re branding themselves as a hardcore band, and there are a lot of those elements present, but don’t expect something like Terror or Stick To Your Guns. The best comparison is a band called Get The Shot (which barely missed out on a top 10 spot on my 2022 album of the year list).

Warspawn nailed the hardcore ethos while introducing enough variety to keep things interesting. “Scars From The World” closes with a guitar solo and “Enemies of Ascension” has a really cool feudal Japanese thread that comes out of nowhere to elevate the end of the track. “Immaculate Objection” and many other songs also have vocal styles that give the effect of gang vocals, offering a flavorful spin on a classic hardcore sound.

This is a fiery debut from a band that has a bright future. The only thing that will hold them back is the fact that they won’t be able to tour. Other than that, this is exactly what I would expect from a hardcore version of Psycho-Frame. It’s ferocious, has a lot going on with the fast paced instrumentals, and offers unrelenting vocals.

Playlist of New Songs

Quick playlist highlights: I’m going to start doing the playlists a little differently in the near future. Instead of making a new one each week, I’m going to have one single playlist that is continuously updated. I’ll keep the 100 most recently added songs on the playlist (so if I add 15 one week, that means the oldest 15 will be removed). This means that you won’t be able to go back and listen to a playlist from last year, which is a bummer, but I can’t have 50+ playlists crowding my Spotify anymore. Having random songs in all these playlists is also making it tough to tell which ones need to be on my “greatest heavy songs of all time” playlist that I’m still working on for you guys.

– Architects – “Elegy.”
The new Architects album just came out, and I have a lot of thoughts, but I don’t want to do a knee-jerk, reactionary review. I’m going to take my time and balance some of my hot takes out with deeper analysis. There are highs and lows, which is disappointing in and of itself because Architects had a perfect three album run (or four depending on your thoughts of ‘Daybreaker’), but it’s obviously better than their last two albums. Yay, a nuanced review, I’m sure that will go over well.

– Vanna – “A Quiet Place..”
Vanna is back!? Wow, this is a welcome return. I loved their last two albums, especially ‘All Hell’ in 2016. They went back to their vocalist from the first two albums, and even though I preferred the more recent one, this song is incredibly good. What’s crazy is that I was a huge fan of Vanna, but even I didn’t know that after they broke up, the original five members created a new band called Inspirit. Now they have reclaimed the Vanna moniker and are going to use it moving forward. And yeah, that makes sense, they should have just called themselves Vanna the whole time. Sometimes bands change so much that they are just a shadow of their former selves and the only thing keeping them alive is the legacy of the band’s name (Attack Attack! is the best example of this), but in this case, Vanna is reclaiming its name with the original line up. What could be better than that.

– Mugshot – “Vale of Tears.”
After a couple EPs, it’s time for these guys to release a full album! I’m not sure if this single is the start of that process or just something they want to play on their tour with Cane Hill. The vocals are sounding deeper and rougher than before. It’s a change but I think I like it.

– Body Prison – “Circle The Drain.”
If Architects didn’t release an album, I would be reviewing this one next week. I’m enthralled with it. Lots of heaviness within a melodic setting.

– Get The Shot – “Pit of Misery.”
Perfect timing! I just name dropped them in the Warspawn review and they give us a new song the same week. If you dig this sound, go back to their 2022 album – it’s insanely fun.

– Deafheaven – “Heathen.”
Dude, this Deafheaven album is looking super promising. They kind of went off the rails with the softness on ‘Infinite Granite,’ but I’m glad they haven’t totally abandoned that vision. Mixing it with the sound from ‘New Bermuda’ has given us the best of both worlds. If you’re looking for an intro to blackgaze, this is it.

– Ends In Tragedy – “For The Heart.”
This band has less than 3,000 listeners on Spotify, and I have no idea how I started following them because they only have three songs so far, but I love this brand of revival metalcore. Certain parts remind me of early Parkway Drive and I Killed The Prom Queen.

– Bleed From Within – “God Complex.”
Speaking of Parkway Drive, is it just me or does Bleed From Within’s vocalist sound exactly like Winston McCall? I know I’ve said that before, but I legitimately don’t think I would be able to tell them apart in this song. The only difference is that everything else Bleed From Within is doing in their recent singles is infinitely better than anything Parkway Drive has done since 2012.

DRAMA – What Is Oceano Doing…

The Oceano situation continues to get worse.  Back in Newsletter #33, I talked about the drama Oceano was facing after announcing a tour with Attila and Dealer.  In the face of that backlash, vocalist Adam Warren decided to quit Oceano.

In an unsurprising turn of events, Oceano is completely dissolving – probably because Adam Warren was the only notable person in the band and it’s not Oceano without him.  And now the drama continues to unfold.

Oceano announced a farewell tour and almost immediately pulled it down because they clearly ripped off the artist that designed the tour poster (see screenshots below).  I mean, that tour poster sucks, and I don’t blame them for trying to spruce it up, but you have to compensate the guy with something if you’re going to use his exact design.

The drama caused SeeYouNextTuesday to drop off the tour because many of their members are graphic designers and they wanted to stand with the artist since they make money that way too.  SeeYouNextTuesday has been replaced with Escuela Grind, which is an interesting pick because they’ve been involved in a lot of recent controversy as well.

Hilariously, Fronz, the vocalist of Attila, being the dickhead that he is, tweeted, “Usually when you’re in a band you wanna ‘go out with a bang.’  Looks like Oceano wanted to go out with a ‘shit in my pants.'”  In the comments of that post, he was also joking with Attila’s front of house engineer that Oceano could have been playing big shows with Attila, implying that Oceano instead chose to fold to the pressure of the woke mob on Twitter and basically blew themselves up as a result.

Oceano has replaced the farewell tour poster with a much simpler version. They know they messed up because the new Instagram post of the tour has the comments turned off.

It’s sad that Oceano is dragging themselves through the mud at the end of their career.  Just a needless, pointless waste.  I don’t think they needed to call it quits to begin with, but even if that’s the path that’s right for them, this should be a celebration of the end. Instead, they’ve set themselves up for the worst send off imaginable.