Drop Dead, Gorgeous are hailing from Denver, USA and this is their latest e.p. containing six songs. I must admit I have never heard of this band until this release and now I am happy I dug it up from the underground. It is hard to describe the music of this band, but I will try. In the song called Cyanide they mix melody of pop punk, electronica, some post punk and post hardcore along with harsh hardcore breakdowns. I am usually fan of electronica use if it is used wisely which is the case here. The vocals are mostly nice melodic with great vocal lines, but they also melt to hardcore screams here and there. Most of the songs is up tempo with some smartly done tempo changes to refresh the song itself. Lyrics are personal and dealing with how to cope with a loss, fighting your inner demons, hope and despair, I love it! I really enjoyed listening to this one, it is quite refreshing and I would like to listen and watch this live once. My personal favorite is Six Feet, also Feels Like Forever, but I love the e.p. as a whole! I recommend this one.
Formed in 2021, Burner are coming from South London and this is their sophomore opus, coming three years after the debut album. This one contains eleven songs of mayhem, all out war attack on your ears and other senses and making you move across the room while listening to this one. Burner play brutal metallic hardcore with lots of breakdowns, moshing parts, some fast parts and sometimes death metal influenced song structures. But, there are some subtle hooks and melodies here and there thrown in for good measure. On the album there are some prominent guests being Josh Middleton of Sylosis and Matt Heafy of Trivium, also Anthony Lucero from Cult Leader. Vocals are mixture of almost death metal growling and screaming with some hardcore shouting too, courtesy of singer Harry Nott. Some of the lyrics are personal, but they also deal with ecology, war and similar merry themes. The whole vibe of the album is very energetic but also somewhat apocalyptic and bleak vision of the human current state and future if we continue in the same way. My personal favorites on this one are: Sunset Parabellum, apocalyptic longer opener The Third Revelation and My Hands Become Weapons. This is a great album, so go check this one out!
This one is out now for couple of months, but it doesn’t matter if the music is good and I want to present this one to the readers of my zine. Axe Collector are coming from San Diego, California and they are playing hardcore punk/powerviolence. There are nine songs on this beauty. Only one song is two minutes long, all the others are under. If you are familiar with powerviolence you’ll know what that means, fast drumming, blast beats, screaming and guttural vocals and raw guitar work. I can also hear some d-beat influences thrown in here and there, but maybe it’s only me. Lyrics are mostly personal with some of them being a bit social themes and you can read that between a few lines. I love such bands that play this kind of music but I can’t listen to them the whole day long, so this one is nice break from other music styles to check out. They kinda remind me of old now defunct Croatian band called Senata Fox, and they were awesome, so I also think that about this album. If you like powerviolence and hardcore punk, raw, fast and aggressive, go check out this beauty. Nice little record, indeed!
