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1 week ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
One doesn’t expect Shakespeare quotes in metalcore albums, but thankfully California’s Mugshot is happy to deliver the unusual. The album title of their sophomore release—All the Devils Are Here, out June 20th via Pure Noise Records—is the second half of a famous quotation in The Tempest.
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2 weeks ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
An important aspect of growth is realizing when less is more but also when more is more. Californian tech/prog death titans Fallujah understand that balance and employ it expertly on their latest record, Xenotaph, out June 13th via Nuclear Blast.
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2 weeks ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
One aspect of writing about and speaking with bands for 15 years is watching bands I grew up with age gracefully and continue to carry on with that creative fire. That spark that catches and ignites into a completed album is always a precarious thing, and there eventually comes a point when that dies out and you become a legacy band (and that’s if you’re lucky). The rare few grow into later chapters and find ways to maintain and perhaps even peak into decades that begin with 4.
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
Bands who wield the tool of the self-titled record deep into their career either have one of two rationales: either they have a sense of internal revitalization or some type of rebirth within. In the case of Pennsylvania prog death titans Rivers of Nihil, the reality here is both. After completing their pre-ordained 4-album Season cycle with the winter-themed The Work, it appeared that a large part of their work was done.
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
“I think that we’re a fucking scientific anomaly in terms of two people that are so conjoined,” laughs Sarah Taylor on just how much time she and her husband-slash-bandmate, Ryan George spend together. Youth Code’s latest record, Yours with Malice, out May 16 via new label Sumerian records, is the glorious result of a duo taking advantage of so much time together as they’re not only married, they have a band together, work together outside of the band at a bar, and have all the same friends.
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
It’s been my experience that it’s the time I’ve stopped looking for something is when I’ve found it. Whether it’s my keys, our cat who defies the laws of physics when hiding, a career, or even a partner, it’s as if my brain actively hinders the ability to find when it’s all you want to do. It’s as if there was a block that like the lips of an angel “Hinder-ed” me from my actual goal. Giving up the goal was when the opportunity fell upon my lap (mostly figuratively).
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
I believe it was the wisdom of noted high school dance mainstay from Semisonic that shared with us this nugget: “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” When guitarist/vocalist Shelby Lermo left the legends in Vastum, he knew he wasn’t just going to sit on his hands. Being the East Coast rep in a California band is hard enough, but that reset gave him a chance to begin again with something (somehow) harder, better, faster, and stronger for him at least (thanks Daft Punk).
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
If you had told me in 2005 that deathcore would still be around 20 years later and also feature some of the most interesting progressions and interpretations in extreme metal, I would have laughed at you. I also would have had a ton of questions about the future and been quite shocked at the answers, but that’s a different story.
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
“Musically, I wanted to write some fucking decent choruses for once, but thematically I had to get out all this pent up dejection and cyclical thinking that was driving me nuts – I’m better now; it’s cool.” That’s vocalist James Palko summing up the vibe excellently on this new band’s upcoming power punk banger.
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1 month ago | 
newnoisemagazine.com | Nicholas Senior
Thrash really is the Terminator at this point. Both started in the early 80s but were commercially released in 1984. Both love science fiction and have a left-wing undercurrent beneath the violence. And at least in the onscreen film version (and not the franchise), both are unkillable. The biggest difference is that the thrash reboots and reincarnations don’t suck, as the latest waves have proven. Few represent the best of the various eras like Costa Rican act Chemicide.
