7 Best New Songs Right Now: 8/20/21 | Revolver

7 Best New Songs Right Now: 8/20/21

Creeping Death, Every Time I Die, Silent Planet and more
Creeping Death Adam Cedillo , Adam Cedillo
Creeping Death
photograph by Adam Cedillo

Here at Revolver, we're always on the hunt for new songs to bang our heads to — indeed, it's a big part of our jobs. With that in mind, here are the tracks released this week in alt-metal, metalcore, death metal and more that have been on heavy rotation at Revolver HQ. For your listening pleasure, we've also compiled the songs in an ever-evolving Spotify playlist.

Rolo Tomassi - "Cloaked"
"Longing for the simplicity of nothing," goes the pleading refrain of Rolo Tomassi's new song "Cloaked," and frontwoman Eva Korman proceeds to work through that tension in real-time. Roiling waves of down-tuned guitars crash against the sturdy bluffs of pounding drums, periodically receding for brief respites of reverberated strums and aqueous croons that sprinkle like a sea breeze. Similar to the U.K. band's penchant for mathematic songwriting, simplicity is always just out of reach. 

Every Time I Die - "Post-Boredom"
Every Time I Die's "Post-Boredom" is crawling with sonic characters. Frisky drum antics and squirrelly guitar patterns; melodies that hang like barflies in the background, perking their heads up when Keith Buckley chooses to engage in brief conversation and then hanging their necks when he darts elsewhere; Queen-like harmonies that lurk behind Buckley's thespian bursts of, "My annihilation!" He may be begging for self-destruction, but the Buffalo bruisers sound alive. 

Spiritbox - "Hurt You"
Each new Spiritbox song seems to challenge the band's own definition of what a Spiritbox song even sounds like. The Canadian trio have thrown fans for a loop this cycle by veering between cascading alt-metal and crunchy hard rock, and "Hurt You" resides somewhere between the two. The industrial main riff is the noisiest thing they've ever written and the groove is nu-metal as hell, but the chorus flips into one of Courtney LaPlante's minty hooks. 

Creeping Death - "The Edge of Existence"
Creeping Death are one of those death metal bands that hardcore kids like, and "The Edge of Existence" makes it easy to see why. The Texas band's latest single lassos up swinging tempo changes and a whammy-addled guitar solo, ties them to a satanic riff and sees if the beasts can break loose. The butt-ugly vocals, gurgling guitar tones and straightforward, almost instinctual thrust provides a legible map for the moshers, but there's enough happening on top to please OSDM addicts. 

Spirit Was - "I Saw the Wheel"
In his old band LVL Up, multi-instrumentalist Nick Corbo had to operate within the borders of fizzy indie-rock, but his new project Spirit Was is able to accommodate his heavier proclivities. The first half of "I Saw the Wheel" stacks slowcore vocals on top of plodding doom metal riffs, and then the track 180's into scorching black-metal that's doused with tasteful leads and suffocating fuzz. 

Succumb - "Aither"
The last single Succumb shared from their upcoming album was a downright hideous mangle of death-metal, grindcore and blackened hardcore. "Aither" is all of that and then some, as the San Francisco group toss techy riffs and mathy rhythmic patterns into the bonfire and see what happens. Succumb are trained pyrotechnics, though, because somehow they never sound like they're losing control of the madness they're creating. Think Full of Hell, but with even more hell. 

Silent Planet - "Panopticon" 
Panopticons are a type of circular prison architecture that were designed so that every inmate can be watched over at once — and without knowing who's watching them. On Silent Planet's latest single of the same name, the progressive metalcore stalwarts channel all of the paranoia of such a building into song, with barking screams scraping over rumbling bass tones and djenty guitars that sound like they could send a cement wall crumbling to smithereens.