Flying On Clipped Wings

Any hack journalist working in the arts sphere can get a few thousand clicks by writing a “rock is dead” piece, because the kids are all listening to Playboi Carti now, and dad rock no longer reigns supreme on the airwaves. While it is true that the current genres favoured by the zeitgeist at the moment are guitar free for the most part, this take fails to consider one significant factor: extreme music has been having a great time. The Internet may have destroyed the ability of bands to make money solely off their music, but its ability to connect listeners across the globe made it far easier for bands to find audiences. You weren't tied to geographical location or needing a big label to do your distribution for you when it could all be put online. As the commercial side of heavy music withered in artistic and commercial terms,the artists on the extreme side stuck to their guns and pushed themselves further to make great art, and they won in the end. Look at how Deafheaven’s Sunba...

As a myriad of hardcore bands plumb the depths of the 90s and early 2000s for inspiration, it was perhaps inevitable that we'd see a revival of the emotionally charged ferocity that bands like Poison The Well, From Autumn To Ashes and Remembering Never in particular dealt out, and for a band playing this sound to get picked up by a label. The band in question, Wristmeetrazor, the label in question, Prosthetic Records, and here we are with their official debut album. Fortunately for the band, I'm quite a fan of that strand of early 00s metalcore, and fortunately for me and the other listeners, they don't just retread those waters on this album. They take their name from a Usurp Synapse song, and the fragmented, blistering ferocity of that strand of screamo, emo violence, is all over this album. Song lengths seldom go past the two minute mark, the guitars squeal and screech with wiry feedback, the vocals are a tortured pterodactyl cry. Yet it's Wristmeet...