Back in 2012, five years after forming, Belgian metal crew X-POZED finally released their debut album. ‘Essence of Hope’ shared some strong material. For those who’d missed their earlier self-released EP, it was the kind of record that provided a strong musical introduction, with a couple of tracks that could certainly be cherry picked to show their range.
Welcome back to the Real Gone Singles Bar! This time out, we bring you a slab of garage punk, a synth based banger, a couple of tunes with a rock and metal core, and more besides. It represents another great round of shining a light on individual tracks from a musical underground, and in a couple of cases, definitely suggests more greatness ahead. As always, we hope you like what you hear…
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Should you encounter any of Dwelled’s online promotional materials before listening to this EP, you’ll find them described using words like “unforgiving” and “blistering”. That’s really not far from the truth. ‘Suffering Heritage’s six tracks attack with a genuine force, where a contemporary metalcore sound is peppered with moments of death tinged brutality. With everything clocking in at under four minutes – under three in many cases – the band haven’t left much room for flowery experimentation, or much else in the way of branching out.
Unearth’s eighth release ‘The Wretched; The Ruinous’ presented fans with an uncompromising thirty six minutes worth of pure metal. The US metalcore band pulled out all the stops to deliver a truly heavy set which pulled together the strongest elements of their crossover sound. The album’s highlights really showed how broadly the band could apply their heaviness for mixed results: ‘Eradicator’ drew from the groove metal of Pantera’s ‘Far Beyond Driven’; the brilliant ‘Broken Arrow’ slowed down just enough to show off more of a timeless hardcore approach; ‘Dawn of The Militant’ applied angular rhythms against a slow and sludgy groove before dropping into some superb thrash passages, effectively showing off the full range of the band’s talents, and ‘Mother Betrayal’ even found time to drop melodic arpeggios and goth influenced vocal passages into something derived from classic Lamb of God. ‘TW;TR’ was one of 2023’s strongest metal discs – one of those records that offered fans of extreme sounds something great, no matter where they chose to drop in.
A new arrival on the metal scene in 2023, Bath based HollowKin have a sound that doesn’t pull any punches. They’re an impressively heavy unit, but unlike some of their would-be peers, they’re not just content with exploring a perfect metalcore sound, or driving forth with a world of thrash riffs which pay homage to their heroes and influences. The five tracks which make up their 2024 debut draw from a broad array of metallic fare, taking in intensive prog metal, groove metal and a pinch of doom and hardcore, along with a whole world of metalcore, creating something that’s sometimes familiar, but always without compromise.