MFA0004: Knocked Loose - 'You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To' (2024)

Rarely has there been a genre of music more tailor-made for instantaneous dismissal than deathcore, but here we are at one of the most visceral records of 2024. It’s got exactly enough restraint, power and distinguishing qualities for it to work. On the guitars, Rate Your Music’s thekubrick9000 notes: "High gain with a noise gate and what sounds to be a DI recording (I'd be surprised if it wasn't) [...] characterless sound that sounds like it was recorded in a vacuum, hence it sounds "clean". Nothing is allowed to ring out and everything is just this compressed sounding slop so its digitally clipping and clean at the same time. It's of course subjective whether you like it or not" and personally, I do. I avoid modern metal like the plague: extremisms of fantasy require a narrowed perspective, and the internet has removed that for everyone, so it feels anachronistic. And of course the genre is completely overstuffed; I just wait for stuff to float to the top then approach with unconditioned ears and skepticism for the hyper-focus of acclaim eclipsing similar stuff. Make sense? So, to me, the lack of any ringing sound is unlike anything I've heard, reducing the instrument to nothing but suggestions of force: this is less like hearing guitars and more like being hit by gales of wind or pushed by knots of river-current. Discussing this, someone I know compared it to an aircraft being depressurised. Personally I find it shockingly ugly and refreshingly, genuinely evil sounding. The rest is likewise digital, high-precision, artificial heft that doesn't sound like the product of extensive manipulation or that this is a studio only sound, even though both are obviously true. Still sounds like desperate and angry real people.

I can't hear what the vocalist is saying - which is the correct approach - but I'm convinced they're singing about legitimate concerns for themselves, and importantly they sound like a nineteen-year-old, which is the exact age one should sound like for this kind of exaggerated emotion and cuts above the otherwise suffocating mix of metal strings. There's loads of other timbres to distinguish things in these mercifully short and brutal songs that end quickly but still move around a lot, and a gracefully short album length, which doesn't leave room for the idea of filler to actually weigh you down and is roughly about the amount of this sound anyone should ingest at once. I think all that explains both the critical acclaim and why this is working as pop music - this a band with 1.4 million monthly spotify listeners at the time of writing, and a band that managed to get there without compromising their sound and managing to appear on late-night television (looking at band and audience makes me never want to see a can of Monster Energy again, but still - what I woulda given to go blind into that audience!). Highlight moments: the breath before the roiling eruption opening 'Thirst', the appearance and precise placement of Poppy's vocals (which feel like a comparative breath of fresh air) on 'Suffocate', the breakdown at 1:58 of 'Piece by Piece' and the squall of '100%' guitars that it ends on, the clicking and clacking percussion work on 'Take Me Home', the contrasting wheedling and firestorming guitars on the politically sledgehammering but right-sided 'Slaughterhouse 2', the likewise evil groove at the end of 'The Calm That Keeps You Awake' that just keeps going before it interrupts and slams into 'Blinding Faith', the varying track lengths that are still all brief; the general fact that someone made the 'St. Anger' snare work. Bits that don't work: the riff-demo phone-recording-ass loop on 'Moss Covers All' and 'Take Me Home', likewise the goofy 78 recording at the end that at least establishes a suffocating, anachronistic American regionality (what I presume their critique of American Christianity is), "BREAK DOWN THE WALL AGAIN!"; the continued preponderance of closing tracks that are the longest on the album but not actually containing more ideas or effective emotion to justify. Not expecting another one that works so well, but looking forward to hearing them try.

B+.