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Amidst the now-commonplace merging and cross-pollination of genres it’s becoming harder for bands to sound innovative. So when you find a band like The Sun Explodes, who manage to meld progressive song structures into a punk rock style with such relative ease, it really is something to cherish.
This short, seven-track mini-album is crammed full of ambitious ideas without ever forgetting to serve the purpose of the music. Every track hits the spot on both your chin-stroking brain and your alcohol-fuelled, moshpit-loony side. If you can imagine Boysetsfire lending their fist-pumping anthems to Between The Buried And Me to fuck around with, then We Build Mountains could well be the result.
With such a diverse set of influences, tracks like A Thousand Fires manage to sound as much like Opeth as it does Biffy Clyro and SevenThreeOne could be Dillinger butting heads with Sigur Rós. As maddening as it may sound on paper, this is a brilliant cocktail of noise.
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Stephen joined the Louder team as a co-host of the Metal Hammer Podcast in late 2021, eventually becoming a regular contributor to the magazine. He has since written hundreds of articles for Metal Hammer, Classic Rock and Louder, specialising in punk, hardcore and 90s metal. He also presents the Trve. Cvlt. Pop! podcast with Gaz Jones and makes regular appearances on the Bangers And Most podcast.