EVERY TIME I DIE "Low Teens"
12"LP - $15.00
EPITAPH / EPITAPH87483v
Buffalo, New York hardcore band Every Time I Die's new album Low Teens is available now. The first new song shared is “The Coin Has a Say” which operates as an extremity test, with every gear-shift somehow pushing the band into inexplicably heavier territories.
“The whole winter, the temperature was in the low teens. Bitterly cold,” says Every Time I Die’s front man Keith Buckley regarding the months that yielded their eighth full-length album. But Keith and the rest of the band Jordan Buckley (guitar), Andy Williams (guitar), Daniel Davison (drums), and Steve Micciche (bass) aren’t so hard up for pathos at this point that they’re grumbling about the temperature outside. If anything, Low Teens is their most poignant and impassioned album in a career full of sardonic illuminations and pit-inciting fervor. The band was on tour in Toronto in December when Keith received a phone call that his wife was in the hospital with a life-threatening pregnancy complication. It was a harrowing night as Buckley left the tour and raced home to overwhelming uncertainty. Both wife and daughter survived the ordeal, but the moment of crisis had a lasting impact on Buckley and an inevitable role in shaping the lyrical scope of Low Teens.
Low Teens’ razor-sharp sound and auditory barbarism was abetted by engineer and producer Will Putney (Acacia Strain, Body Count, Exhumed). Low Teens’ guest vocalists further demonstrate these polarized extremes, with formidable bellower Tim Singer (Deadguy, Kiss It Goodbye, No Escape) roaring alongside Buckley on opening track “Fear and Trembling” and longtime friend Brendan Urie (Panic! at the Disco) providing a melodic counterpoint on “It Remembers”. Yes, Every Time I Die has always juggled hardcore urgency, metal brutalism, and rock melodies, but never has it felt this instinctive or this vicious. The pressure drop that yielded Low Teens could have crippled a lesser band, but Every Time I Die weathered the winter to deliver their strongest offering to date because of, not in spite of, these hardships and roadblocks.
Track Listing:
01. Fear and Trembling
02. Glitches
03. C++ (Love Will Get You Killed)
04. Two Summers
05. Awful Lot
06. I Didn't Want To Join Your Stupid Cult Anyway
07. It Remembers
08. Petal
09. The Coin Has A Say
10. Religion Of Speed
11. Just As Real But Not As Brightly Lit
12. 1977
13. Map Change
DEATHWISH DIRECT
INNUMERABLE FORMS "Promo 2016"
CASSETTE TAPE - $4.40
HELL MASSACRE / HMHM006cs
Innumerable Forms rise again with a taste of the unknowable horror still to come, offering demo versions of 2 songs for their upcoming full-length. Similarities to early Disgrace (Fin) and Demigod (Fin) continue to dominate the sound of these songs, but with some moments that recall early Paradise Lost (UK) and Anathema (UK) seeping in as well.
Originally self released in a minuscule quantity, now properly released by Hell Massacre on a pro-printed cassette in an edition of 250 numbered copies.
Track Listing:
01. Petrified
02. Joyless
DEATHWISH DIRECT
KRIMEWATCH "Demo 2016"
7"EP - $5.65
LOCKIN OUT / LOR043v
New from NYC - Japanese punk meets American hardcore; keeping it simple with shouty vocals and driving beats. Demo recording remastered and pressed on vinyl.
Track Listing:
1. 小便 たれ
2. Coward
3. ゴキブリ 男
4. No Sympathy
5. Peach Generation
DEATHWISH DIRECT
SHEER MAG "Compilation"
12"LP - $12.50
WILSUNS RC / WRC091v
Sheer Mag’s Compilation LP features the Philadelphia rock band’s three seven-inches, released between 2014 and 2016. All twelve songs were recorded onto the same vintage 8-track tape machine, carted to various locations around Philadelphia. The first two were produced in a makeshift studio wedged between two bedrooms in the band’s former South Philly house, while the third came out of a practice space in the Port Richmond neighborhood. Sequenced chronologically, the newly remastered songs reveal a young DIY band finding its sound.
Track Listing:
I
01. What You Want
02. Sit And Cry
03. Point Breeze
04. Hard Lovin
II
05. Fan The Flames
06. Travelin On
07. Whose Side Are You On
08. Button Up
III
09. Can’t Stop Fighting
10. Worth The Tears
11. Night Isn’t Bright
12. Nobody’s Baby
DEATHWISH DIRECT
LAST WEEK:
BARGHEST "Born Of Tooth And Talon"
7"EP - $6.25
ELDER MAGICK / MAGICK002v
Track Listing:
01. Born of Tooth and Talon
02. Sterile Initiates
DEATHWISH DIRECT
DEPTHS OF REALITY "Self Titled"
7"EP - $5.00
XPRESSIONS / XPR004v
A worldview that only 2016 could justify. A sound that only Massachusetts could produce. A document of expressionism that only Xpressions could propagate. Listen carefully — it’s all here: viciousness, justice, paranoia, wrath, grace, revenge, confusion, vanity, epiphany. And also everything else. To listen is to recognize what is hidden but demonstrably present in the world. To honour the chaos of the uncanny present. Of what we wish we were only imagining. To plumb the depths of reality.
Track Listing:
01. Out of My Hands
02. Never Again
03. Blindspot
04. Pretend to Care
05. Tomb
06. The Gate
07. In a Daze
DEATHWISH DIRECT
MEMORY LOSS "Blackout"
7"EP - $5.00
VINYL CONFLICT / VINCON009v
First vinyl offering from MEMORY LOSS, one of Richmond’s newest and most exciting hardcore punk acts. On “Blackout” you get four songs that mine from the golden era of early 80s hardcore punk and 90s-era noise rock but with a very unique and individual take. Each song is the equivalent of a dark path we’ve all been down, but never talked or written about. Fear not though, MEMORY LOSS is there to speak for you. They’ve placed their finger right on the pulse of just how difficult it is to live in the age of anxiety and dread. If you like your punk with a general feeling of despair and disillusionment, look no further.
Track Listing:
01. Wild
02. Jailed
03. Nothin But Trouble
04. Blackout
DEATHWISH DIRECT
WESTPOINT "Self Titled"
12"LP - $11.25
TRIPLE B / TRIPLEB066v
Entombed within the chrome coffin of Kingston Pennsylvania - aggravated youth suffering from the stigmas of sex, boredom, death and creativity - WESTPOINT was procreated. Birthed through a cavity in the fangs of suburban America in 2014, they have since grown into a garden of strange orange light and a saccharine slice of early adulthood. Bloomed into a beautiful flower, “Dive” was released in 2015 and with it a dissection and reanimation of the purple glow of progression. Sonically suffocating and devastatingly whimsical, the orphan choir marched forward to a somber, slumbering cadence. 2016 sees WESTPOINT in a new light. Crushing softness, the harsh luster of growing and the adolescent haunting us all. Tangerine scream. With their new self-titled LP, to be released on BBB Records this fall, WESTPOINT have been vom-ited out of the bottom of the belly of a good vibe. Subtle like a ghost and savory. Cemetery-esque - dark, sullen, with glimmering shimmers of passing positivity and hope. This is a band morphing from naive children to real life adults - it’s absolutely beautiful in a dreary, dreamy, surreal way.
Tracklisting:
01. Avoid the Oxygen
02. Blur My Vision
03. Feel October
04. In My Way
05. Jamais Vu
06. Anesthesia
07. Idle Hands
08. Lunar Incantations
09. Tangerine
10. Mars
DEATHWISH DIRECT
YOUTH FUNERAL "Heavenward"
12"LP - $10.70 / CASSETTE - $6.00
SKELETAL LIGHTNING / SKELETAL048v
New Hampshire / Massachusetts based Youth Funeral’s debut full-length Heavenward begins as one hopes it would, with a chaotic burst of energy that gives the listener an immediate sense of what their bleak brand of fast-paced hardcore is all about: blasting drums, rumbling bass, and octave based guitar leads towered over by vocalist Casey Nealon’s gruff rhythmic yell.
What marks Heavenward as a major step forward for the band comes in their ability to work outside the confines of aggressive music. Youth Funeral shows their versatility in tracks like “Only In Sleep” which begins with a whirlwind of pick slides and punk beats that could lead into a straight ahead song yet takes the listener in another direction entirely, lolling lazily into a sliding guitar lead over a fuzzed out two-chord progression.
While the hopeless feeling that dominates the beginning of the record remains, Youth Funeral presents the raw emotion found earlier in a new form that brings a welcome change of dynamic and pace. “Shadow Phases” similarly finds the band working outside of their comfort zone by adding an off-kilter groove in the middle of the song that makes the plummeting conclusion all the more poignant.
Heavenward at times captures the feedback driven aggression of modern acts like Loma Prieta and Lord Snow, but Youth Funeral sets itself apart from current trends in hardcore by writing unpredictable, jarring music that fearlessly defies expectations of both genre and form. Some of the more dynamic songs show an active attempt to move away from their more dissonant spastic sound, while tracks like “Unthought” and “Armors” remind us that Youth Funeral are still proficient when it comes to writing on-point, driving hardcore music.
With Heavenward, Youth Funeral embraces its roots as an east coast hardcore act while making a conscious effort to move away from the tropes of simply structured aggressive music for a more engaging listen.
Track Listing:
01. Heavenward
02. Amber Light
03. Only In Sleep Safe
04. Lonely Man
05. Helplessness
06. Shadow Phases
07. Unthought
08. Bloom
09. Armors
10. Perfume
11. With Love I Weep
DEATHWISH DIRECT
