Summer's here! Kind of! With daylight savings officially kicking in and the weather taking a decidedly sunnier bent (here in the UK at least... for now) festival season has never seemed closer.
And what better way to celebrate that fact than by championing some of the finest and most exciting new bands around? Much as we do every month, we've searched far and wide to find you some of the most exciting new bands around, offering up a diverse selection for your listening pleasure.
So crack open a cold beverage of your choice, stick on our massive new noise playlist and dive into some of the exciting new bands we've dug up this month. Got suggestions for bands you'd like to see covered in future? Stick 'em in the comments!
Melted Bodies
“I’m not writing elevator music!” Melted Bodies vocalist/ guitarist Andy Hamm howls with passion. “I want to connect with people in a very vehement, deep way… Someone told me they had a panic attack listening to the record. Though… I think that’s a good thing?”
The Los Angeles crew’s alt metal spew isn’t for the faint of heart. Feasting on a riffy buffet of grindcore, 80s new wave and tormented thrash, the band embody sonic whiplash. One second you’re indulging in sludgy police cannibalism fantasies like Eat Cops, the next you’re plunging into the frantic drum and bass breakdown of Liars.
Andy was previously a key member of indie unit Local Natives. The Molotov cocktail of insanity that is Melted Bodies is a far cry from his previous radio-friendly endeavours – and he suits the chaos perfectly, vocally teetering on the edge as he fluctuates between cartoonishly maniacal and downright hostile.
The band’s latest record, The Inevitable Fork, Vol. 3, induces a gnawing sense of anxiety, the menacing rumble of Bloodlines and sombre twang of Talk Some More About It scratching at a scab of agonising existentialism.
“A lot of us deal with anxiety and depression, especially when considering what we’re doing with our lives,” Andy reflects. “The record channels those mental struggles into a cathartic rave of noise.”
Word of warning though if you’re attending a Melted Bodies show, be sure to bring Andy along a toothy offering.
“I’ve been collecting old dentures for more than a year,” he admits with a laugh. “The Inevitable Fork cover features some of them… and the background is also my own hair, which I collected for a month.”
Okaaaay. Charming as he is, we fear he might have taken the whole ‘melted bodies’ thing too far. But he’s chuffed with his collection. He laughs: “Maybe we can be classed as denture-core?!” Emily Swingle
The Inevitable Fork is out now
Sounds Like: If the gunk in your plughole became sentient, grew limbs, then had an existential meltdown to the tune of industrial grindcore and eccentric avant-metal
For Fans of: System Of A Down, Dog Fashion Disco, Machine Girl
Listen To: Liars
Dawn Of Ouroboros
One of the freshest-sounding bands in the underground, Dawn Of Ouroboros play progressive songs that snake between blackgaze atmospherics and crunching melodeath. Their genre-smashing ways are a direct response to their founders’ past work as hired guns for other artists.
“When I played in other people’s bands, it was like, ‘We’re doing this style’ or ‘We’re trying to sound like this’,” guitarist Tony Thomas explains. “I don’t want to say I had a harder time writing when I was told things like, ‘Oh, this has to be a death metal album’, but it’s just not the way I listen to music.”
He also explains that his day job as a molecular biologist informs his boundary-free songwriting. “Working as a researcher, I guess it’s more explorative. I’m going to sit down and I’m going to write a bunch of music until something stands out.”
Tony started Dawn Of Ouroboros with vocalist Chelsea Murphy in 2018. They’re longtime collaborators, but work in opposite ways. Their dichotomy is clear on Bioluminescence, their new album, where Chelsea lets emotion dictate the direction of her dramatic wails on top of Tony’s meticulously thought-out arrangements.
“There are times where I’ll come in after he’s structured something in a certain way and make suggestions and he might look at me with death eyes,” she admits with a laugh, “but I think we balance each other out quite well.”
Having teamed up with in-demand producer Lewis Johns (Employed To Serve, Conjurer) for Bioluminescence, the next item on the Californians’ bucket list is playing internationally.
“It’d be awesome to tour Japan with [blackgaze/screamo favourites] Asunojokei,” Chelsea says. “It’d also be great to tour Europe with other bands we could fit in with, such as Møl and Alcest. That’s a huge goal!” Matt Mills
Bioluminescence is out now via Prosthetic. Dawn Of Ouroboros tour the US with Baroness from May 7.
Sounds Like: Blackgaze and melodic death metal converging inside a cosmic wormhole
For Fans Of: Deafheaven, Ne Obliviscaris, Svalbard Listen To: Bioluminescence
Tayne
Their name might come from a cult Tim and Eric sketch wherein Paul Rudd meets his nude dancing miniature double, but Tayne are imbuing industrial rock with a sincere human struggle. Formed by frontman Matthew Sutton in Ireland but now based in London, the band’s debut album, LOVE, draws on a family history demonstrating the complicated nature of what Matthew calls “that impact word”.
“The album is more about conflict, but the idea of love for me was a big conflict in my life,” shares Matthew. “I ended up having this conversation with my dad who was in a heterosexual marriage with four kids and then ultimately realised he was a gay man. I realised that my whole existence comes from this conflict of love.”
On an industrial spectrum that ranges from accessible commerciality to clanging harshness, Tayne cut right to the sweet spot.
“The incubator of Tayne came from Lady Gaga’s Artpop,” says Matthew of his unlikely eureka moment. “If you took her off that record, it’s the most obnoxious thing you’ve ever heard. It’s her most critically unsuccessful album, but I thought, if Gaga can do that with pop music, then that opens the door for anyone to do anything.”
On thumping lead single Fear, this juxtaposition manifests in a guest slot from James Spence of UK post-hardcore luminaries Rolo Tomassi, injecting a violence into the uber-danceable like an attack dog let loose in a nightclub. Matthew sees these unexpected collaborations and crossovers as lifeblood for musical rejuvenation.
“It’s one of those pinch-yourself moments where I’ve only really known James the last 12 months, but I’ve been a fan for 18 years. An audience who aren’t tribal are probably going to be more open to a band like Tayne mashing up these sounds. I think that’s a good thing for the scene, because it opens the door to more fruitful horizons.” Perran Helyes
Love is out now via MNRK. Tayne play 2000 Trees and ArcTanGent festivals this summer.
Sounds Like: Sneaking listens of glitter pop at the back of the goth club
For Fans Of: Health, Nine Inch Nails, Crosses
Listen To: Fear
Bloom
Like a quirky rom-com that suddenly veers into thriller territory with a surprise murderous streak, Sydney’s Bloom find great joy in disrupting convention, mixing pop-punk, melodic hardcore and metalcore into an emotional package.
“We don’t want to feel constrained by what we can and can’t explore,” says vocalist Jono Hawkey of their debut album, Maybe In Another Life.
Having started out “playing shitty Touché Amoré covers”, the band quickly outgrew their melodic hardcore roots. Counterbalancing every melodious hook on the record is a gut-wrenching breakdown or tech metal turn to subvert expectations.
The album follows 2020’s tooth-baring EP In Passing, which blended crushing, complex riffs with seismic, radio-friendly choruses as Jono grieved the death of his grandfather. This time, his evocative lyrics journey through a bittersweet break-up.
“Heaviness, to me, is intensity; it’s the emotional weight of a song,” says Jono. “A lot of what we write has an overwhelming feeling of sadness, but we realised we could be pissed off and angry too. Sonically, emotionally and lyrically, we wanted to write music that was relentless.”
Importantly, those emotions translate onto the stage. “We’re very no-bullshit,” he states. “The emotion we put into our instruments is everything. People really connect with that.”
Last year, they took producer Christopher Vernon on the road with them as they supported Polaris across their homeland. Writing and recording in real time resulted in the reputation-affirming single The Works Of You, a brutal, hardcore-laced take on pop-punk. Aussie metal is in rude health, and Bloom are another uncompromisingly authentic example of that. But don’t expect them to stand still.
“You don’t need to find your niche and exist exclusively within it,” Jono concludes. “We trust our gut to keep evolving.” Phil Weller
Bloom's latest single, The Works Of You, is out now.
Sounds Like: A virulent gradient between soaring pop-punk hooks and blood-lusting tech metal, with melodic hardcore at the centre
For Fans Of: Touché Amoré, Casey, La Dispute
Listen To: Bound To Your Whispers
