Here at Revolver, we're always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it's a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in metalcore, alt-metal, witch house and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ.
For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.
Hanabie - "OTAKU Lovely Densetsu"
Tokyo metalcore renegades Hanabie just dropped an album in 2023, but they're already back with more new music.
"OTAKU Lovely Densetsu" is the perfect introduction to their vibrantly heavy, pairing animated synths with pounding metalcore instrumentation in a way that brings to mind POST HUMAN-era Bring Me the Horizon crossed with Babymetal's cheery J-metal.
Sematary - "WENDIGO"
On his beautifully belligerent 2023 mixtape, Butcher House, $uicideboy$ tourmate Sematary found synergy between Chief Keef-ian drill rap and Salem-indebted witch house.
"WENDIGO," on the other hand, is pure goth-punk. Sematary bleats and moans over the crunching guitars and brittle drum machines, howling like a loon trapped in the woods with his studded belt on — which is exactly what he's doing in the song's VHS-quality music video.
bulletsbetweentongues - "Man Without Fear"
Ephyra Records have tantalized Revolver HQ with their arsenal of top-tier metalcore, hardcore and deathcore bands. bulletsbetweentongues are a bit different for the label, moreso channeling Zao than Poison the Well.
The raw and brittle "Man Without Fear" places throaty emoviolence screams atop churning waves of primitive metalcore that's spikier than it is moshy. The huge swell of feedback in the middle of the song bursts into a skronky groove, and the whole thing has a raw, cruddy production that's lo-fi and harsh in the best ways.
Ingested - "Paragon of Purity"
U.K. heavyweights Ingested caught our ears with their clobbering 2022 album, Ashes Lie Still, and the aural beatings continue on "Paragon of Purity.
Landing somewhere between deathcore and NWOBHM, this new joint sounds like if Whitechapel had Lamb of God guitarist Mark Morton in their arsenal. It's heavy, the lead lick is tasty as hell, and there're plenty of breakdowns to go around.
Amira Elfeky - "A Dozen Roses"
Nu-metal is so big now that it's leaking back into the mainstream. Amira Elfeky is an artist signed to major label Atlantic Records, but her new song "A Dozen Roses" sounds like it could come rattling out of the monitors a small, dark metal club.
At once ethereal and gut-punching, Elfeky folds the dirgy alt-metal of Deftones, the melancholy goth-rock of Evanescence and the eerie doom-gaze of King Woman into her bleary-eyed sound.
Invent Animate - "Sleepless Deathbed"
Invent Animate's new song is "about hallucinating a state of your own death and being stuck in that lifeless plane of constant and repeating discomfort." That sounds pretty torturous, but "Sleepless Deathbed" goes down smoothly.
The band's concussive djent riffs are in fine form, and the way the hymnal clean singing weaves in between the frigid screams creates a unique icy-hot effect that's rarely heard in this type of metalcore.
