Posted: by The Editor
The Alternative Weekly Roundup is a column where our staff plugs a variety of new releases in a concise, streamlined format. Albums, singles, videos, and live sets. Check back each Monday to see what we were jamming the week prior.
BREATHS – melt away
BREATHS is the solo project of Richmond, VA, multi-instrumentalist Jason Roberts, and melt away is his first foray away from the post-metal and drone of his previous releases and into shoegaze. He does a great job with the style, sliding effortlessly into the wavy, washy tones and textures, a pillowy and lush twenty-minute journey.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
xEDENISGONEx – “Buried in the Darkest Past”
Any number of bands are reviving late ’90s/early ’00s metalcore, but xEDENISGONEx are putting their own spin on it. They draw as much from black metal as they do from death metal, and “Buried in the Darkest Past” is one of their best and most unhinged songs yet.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Powerwasher – “Crossing the Street”
On “Crossing the Street,” the lead single from Powerwasher’s upcoming debut full-length Everyone Laughs, the Baltimore- and Brooklyn-based trio is fed up with the niceties of daily life. “It was a pleasure running into you / You close the distance I’d rather keep,” goes the track’s second verse, delivered between a growl and a yawn.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
deepincision – sorry for the wait
sorry for the wait follows deepincision’s three-track 2021 demo, delivering six more minutes of breathless metallic hardcore. At nearly four minutes, “robbed blind” is by far the band’s longest and most complex composition, and “virtual flesh” is a three-minute string of breakdowns that only manage to get heavier and heavier as the song goes on. Hopefully it won’t be three years until their next release.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Careen – “Last Winter”
The first song on Careen’s upcoming Cycle 3 EP, “Last Winter” is taut PNW indie rock at at its knottiest. Careen’s opened for both Mount Eerie and Loma Prieta throughout their career, and “Last Winter” fits comfortably somewhere between those extremes. Much of the rest of Cycle 3 is tenser, darker, more aggressive, but “Last Winter” opens things on an arresting note.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
greyland – Nothing Has Stood Out So Far
On greyland’s debut EP, Nothing Has Stood Out So Far, they deal in crunchy, drawn-out shoegaze; “Drawing Flowers” and “Spider Bite” unspool over their six- and nine-minute runtimes from tense, brisk slowcore to massive, bludgeoning outros. Sandwiched in between, “Griever,” at only three and a half minutes, follows the same path in miniature, proof that greyland can deliver the same payoff in half the time.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
RAOUSSE – Constant Memories
RAOUSSE’s latest EP Constant Memories is their tightest yet, a refinement of the sound they’ve been honing with their previous singles. They’ve incorporated a lot more melody than in the past–Gemilang Surya is much more likely to deliver lyrics in a raspy croon than a throaty snarl, and “Let Go” is a pristine pop-punk cut. They haven’t lost their edge, though; they’re still operating at breakneck paces, and “Grey” is melodic hardcore par excellence.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
Fainting Dreams – Those Left Untouched by the Light
Fainting Dreams’ six-track Those Left Untouched by the Light exists in the middle of the three-circled Venn diagram between shoegaze, slowcore, and doom metal, melding sludgy riffs with Elle Reynolds’s wispy voice. The results are sublime, a feathery and beautiful LP perfectly suited to the grey skies and biting winds of mid-January.
Zac Djamoos | @gr8whitebison
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