Release Roundup: 7/10/26

Top Picks

DevilDriver – Strike And Kill (groove thrash, metalcore)

We are so back baby! From my review:

It may have taken a near-complete line-up change to make it happen, but DevilDriver are back with a vengeance. Strike and Kill is easily the best album they've put out since Beast (2011) and Winter Kills (2013), probably before that as well. Fans of The Fury of Our Maker's Hand (2005) and The Last Kind Words (2007) will find a lot to like here, but Strike and Kill isn't simple throwback. [Enterprise Earth guitarist Gabe] Mangold's guitar playing is a perfect fit that gives the band a more modern-sounding edge on top of their classic vim and vigour. Where preceding DevilDriver albums have sounded like a band out of time, attempting to recapture both a sound and era that had passed them by, Strike and Kill sounds as though the groove thrash titans haven't missed a single step.

No Cure – It’s Going to Get Dark (rowdy metal/death-core)

No Cure are one of my favourite new bands, making It's Going to Get Dark one of my most anticipated albums of the year. Yet, while I'd say I'm certainly satisfied, I can't say I'm particularly blown away by this debut long-player as much as I have been their previous EPs. Maybe this sort of ultra-aggressive, metallic hardcore just works better in smaller doses, although this "full-length" is only ten minutes longer than any of their preceding efforts and I have been known to spin I Hope I Die Here (2024) back to back on more than a few occasions. Perhaps what keeps It's Going to get Dark from quite living up to expectations is the greater incorporation of death metal into the band's sound, which pushes them more towards the overtly deathcore end of the metallic spectrum but also lessens the frantic hardcore urgency that propelled previous outings and leaves a lot of the tracks end up being overly plodding.

Just because I've started off overly negative though, doesn't mean that I don't think this album is worth your time, or that it doesn't lay waste to everything else that's out this week (save that ferocious new DevilDriver album), just that this seemingly fast-follow probably could have used a little bit more time in the oven. Lead single "Convulsing in the Dark" is the only track here that really captures the magic of No Cure's earlier EPs, with its take on Knocked Loose amid a flurry of death metal dive bombs. That's not to say the rest of the record is a slouch. "Slowly Turning Blue" also stands out, bringing to mind modern Gojira, with its harmonic laden, stomping groove, and "Brain Matter Displacement" is another highlight, whose brutal refrain of "Smash your skull into the pavement / Brain matter displacement / Concrete tomb encasement" is unfortunately brought down brought by the excessive casual misogyny from New Jersey hardcore MC Jayway (of Bayway) that follows.

The main problem with It's Going to Get Dark though, is—say it with me—it's sequencing! The record is enhanced considerably, simply by placing its final two tracks first. This way the album opens with the swelling melodeath of "Everything I Love is Dead or Dying", which reminds me a lot of similarly sequencing-challenged pit-starters Gatecreeper, and goes straight into the pummeling, pigheaded hardcore of "Still Fucking Straight Edge", which certainly should have been earlier on the album, if nothing else. With a bit more re-arranging you can also get the album closing with epic death-metal duo "My World in Flames" and "Starved in Sanctuary", following the fade-out of Acacia Strain-featuring "Purity Spiral", which makes for a more satisfactory—albeit more conevntional—climax.

Anyway, this album is still a ton of fun, and they're going to be playing later this year with To the Grave at that tiny studio venue I saw Bleeding Through in a while back, so I'm gonna throw on my Merciless Destruction tank top and "Kill Your Local Animal Abuser" mosh shorts and go get rowdy!