Celebrating 300 Articles: A Self-Important History of Swim Into The Sound Merch

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Last week, Swim Into The Sound sold out our first-ever run of t-shirts, and that’s unfathomably cool to me. First off, I wanted to thank everyone who encouraged me to make these shirts a reality, this was a fun project, and I’m proud to have a piece of this blog out in the world in such a concrete, physical way. Thanks even more if you’re one of the 20 people out there who are rocking it. Even if this shirt is just a goofy novelty item in your closet, it means the world that anyone would ever support me or my blog that much. 

While we just published our 300th article last week premiering the new Grave Saddles single, this is almost the “spiritual” 300th post, as I would like to pause, break format, and write candidly for anyone interested in reading. To borrow a phrase from the inane and inspiring Comedy Bang Bang, I’m going to “break off a fresh ‘hundo.” Historically, my hundredth posts have been big, intentional celebrations of me, my music, and the site. In a way, this is very much “back to the roots” of the early days of Swim, where I treated this more like a personal blog than a “music publication.” Okay, I’ll stop self-mythologizing now.

When I started this article, it began as a thank you to anyone who bought a shirt, but now I want to recount how they were made and the (semi-secret) history of Swim Into The Sound merch. If that sounds interesting, read on; if not, understandable, have a nice day. Regardless, thank you for reading any of our previous 300 articles or buying one of our shirts. It’s a surreal feeling to have all of those out of my closet and off into the world. Thanks for supporting this blog and supporting independent music writing. It’s hard out here, but we do it all for love. 

Swim Into The Sound has never made money. In fact, this blog has consistently lost me money. From day one, this was zero investment, with the site running 100% off Google Docs and Tumblr. I waded into any sort of financial commitment very gradually over the course of years. After I had run this thing for long enough and confirmed that it was something I wanted to keep doing, I bought a $20 domain from Godaddy and slapped it on my Tumblr page as a URL mask. Surprisingly, the move from “swimintothesound.tumblr.com” to “swimintothesound.com” did a lot to make this feel like a legitimate operation, even if it was just a top-line superficial change.

About a year later, I bought a (pretty massive) run of 4x4” stickers that I’m still milking to this day. Those stickers have lasted five years and, for a while, only existed as things I would stick up on light poles or dive bar bathrooms around Portland and Detroit. A month or two after I bought those stickers, I moved this whole operation over to Squarespace (yeah, boo, I know), but it felt like a move towards “independence” that I needed to make at the time. That same year, I paid a local photographer in the Portland DIY scene for usage rights to some of her photos from a recent Remo Drive concert. The beautiful, sweaty, grimy, black-and-white pictures you see on the home page are the imagery we’ve used since 2018. 

The next merch I committed to was an order of guitar picks with the blog’s logo printed onto them. They’re incredibly light and probably more of a novelty than anything, but I just thought they would make cool “business cards” for when I met people at shows or wanted to tell someone about the blog. It didn’t have my name or email on it or anything, I just figured “if they google Swim Into The Sound,” they’d find me. 

For a few years, any other money spent on this blog was either a domain renewal or buying another year of Squarespace. For some reason, I decided to order a one-off Swim Into The Sound Mug during the height of my 2020 Mania. I just bought it off one of those photo printing sites, so it’s “one of one,” and probably was more proof of concept than anything.

But I had always wanted to make a T-shirt. For years, I wanted to do even a weird little one-off with the logo on black, but never pulled the trigger. It didn’t help that, in the back of my mind, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the blog’s “normal” logo would look weird on a shirt. I still love our wordmark, color scheme, and the font I chose, but I just think it would look odd as words stretched across somebody’s chest. 

About this time a year ago, I saw lead singer of Khaki Cuffs and Twitter Friend Brody Hamilton posting about their design work. Aside from some solid logo rips and iconic shitposting vision, I knew Brody could throw together a pretty gnarly metal logo, so I thought, ‘Why not?’ and decided to commission one.

The first time I saw this logo, I was absolutely geeked. When I got the final version, I sent it to pretty much anyone I thought would be able to read it. I didn’t want to destroy the “brand recognition” of my standard logo (I still like how bold and simple it is), but this metal logo essentially became the secondary mark for the site. Brody was kind enough to lay out a “square” version and a “horizontal” layout I could use as my Twitter header. 

In August of 2022, I drove from Denver to Colorado Springs for a Short Fictions concert. I had never been to that city, so I was going around taking it all in the first time, trying to absorb the vibe. At one point, I was driving past a pretty nondescript business complex and saw a sign that read “Tees in Time.” My thought process was basically, “Huh, what if?” and I decided to get a quote the next day. 

I finally had all the pieces I needed: a sick-ass logo that would actually look good on a shirt, disposable income, and just enough of a home base established here in Denver. I decided if I ordered a small run of shirts, I could give a few out to friends and maybe even sell a handful. Most of all, I wanted one for myself, but I figured I could probably make the numbers work on a small order. 

This challenged me to learn about “ecommerce” and different ways to sell things online. Thanks to Jake from Grey Matter, Nick from Equipment, and Jake from No Fun Club, all of whom were kind enough to answer my (pretty stupid) baseline questions about running an online storefront. After a sufficient amount of research and finance wankery, I was spun up on LimitedRun and Pirate Ship. I had a minimal but clean storefront, and I was in business. 

It was hard to predict how many of these shirts I was going to sell. I was potentially ready to sit on these for years, just like I have with my stickers, but after a few sales rolled in from some friends back in Detroit and a few Twitter pals, I was struck that anyone actually wanted these enough to pay real money. It wasn’t until some of these friends sent me pictures of them wearing the shirts that I realized I made shirts and sent them halfway across the country. Pretty cool moment.

Earlier this year, I decided my time in Denver had come to a natural conclusion. In about a week, I’ll be moving my band shirts, kitchenware, keepsakes, and other sundries back to Portland, Oregon, where I’ll hang out for the summer. I stared down ten-ish remaining shirts in my closet, discounted them, slapped the free shipping option on, and decided to sell em hard. In one day, I shipped out the final six shirts and had one less thing to move. Go me. 

Then it hit me that (even though some were discounted) 19 people besides myself support whatever this is enough to own a shirt of it. That means the world to me, and I just wanted to capture that feeling of gratitude in this article today. That was a lot of backstory, numerical figures, and nitty-gritty details, but sometimes it’s nice to pull back the curtain and let you know how stuff like this runs. It’s easy to see how any support, financial or otherwise, can go so far at this scale. 

I’ve had all the sales from these shirts piling up in my Paypal (an account I never use for anything) and cashed it all out at once. Twenty shirts and months worth of planning finally done. This was an experiment, and it’s reached a point where I can actually stop and reflect. The fact that it coincided so closely with our 300th article is just a happy accident. 

I am feeling the love, and I always want to keep spreading that. As a way to pay it forward and spread the love, I’m making a donation to The Center on Colfax, which is an LGBTQ community center here in Denver. That wasn’t profit or money left over, it just feels like something that makes sense to do. Swim Into The Sound is a silly blog about emo music, and sometimes there are more important things we have to acknowledge and support and push out money toward. 

This has been long and very masturbatory, but if you read this far, thank you. Three hundred posts is a huge milestone that’s worth celebrating. Moreover, when we published our massive Fauxchella interview last month, that article officially pushed the site to over 500,000 words published. It’s crazy to think that half a million words have been posted to this blog, and that’s a number that still trips me up a little. 

Regardless, there’s lots to celebrate in an already awesome year. Thank you for everything. 

Here’s to another 300 and half a milli more. 

Grave Saddles – ​​Willie Nelson Golfing Dream #3 | Single Premiere

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Really Rad Records

The one-word pitch I would give for Grave Saddles is “countrygaze!” If that semi-fake combination of genres makes you think, ‘fuck yeah,’ then this one’s for you. If you appreciate a pastoral view and a cool breeze just as much as you like blowing your eardrums out to Cloakroom, then you’re in the right place. If you dig crushing riffs just as much as you love crushing brews, then this is the band for you. 

Grave Saddles represents a promise placed at the exciting middle section of these two sounds. In their music, we hear distorted shoegaze guitars that jangle, twang, and hum but also know when to sweep things up into a big, chaotic dustbowl of noise. The vocals are often crunched up and just as distorted and twangy as the guitar. The end result is a sound that fleshes out a distinct version of shoegaze that’s caked in dirt and grit like a car traveling cross-country. If you want an introduction to Grave Saddles, there’s no better time to start than right now with the goofily-named “​​Willie Nelson Golfing Dream #3.”

“​​Willie Nelson Golfing Dream #3” is a conflicted love song that finds our hero desperately trying to pin down their emotions. The only scene-setting exposition we get is an allusion to springtime, which is placed over a world-weary guitar strum. The following line immediately delves into the topic at hand while accidentally evoking mid-90s family-friendly films as the lyrics question, “What exactly is that thing you do?” 

We soon learn our narrator is “absolutely fawning” over whoever it is they’re singing about, but with that elation comes a price. The song's emotional core comes in the chorus, which lays out exactly how it feels to have found your person and then not be able to spend as much time around them as you’d like.

​​I’ve got mixed feelings about you
Making things this fun
Cuz all the times without you now drag
On and on and on

That was some real shit you just said, Grave Saddles. 

While the relationship depicted in this song seems like it’s still fresh, this type of sweeping and all-consuming love is all one could ever hope for. Time will tell how this infatuation influences the band’s songwriting going forward, but for now, I’m happy to saddle up to these emotions and commiserate with the awkward feeling of missing someone you love so dearly.

This song is just one of three that make up an EP coming later this month via Really Rad Records. If you haven’t been paying attention, Portland, Oregon’s Really Rad has been on an absolute tear. Since this time last year, they’ve put out attention-grabbing emo releases from Avec Plaisir, Celebration Guns, A Place For Owls, and Swiss Army Wife. They’ve also released the awesome Violent Picture / Violent Sound by Dosser, a “contemporary grunge band” that sits somewhere between Drug Church and Taking Meds. The label has been around since 2014 but has really started to up its game in recent years with a string of impressive releases, up to and including this new Grave Saddle EP.

While three songs might sound lightweight for an EP, anyone familiar with Grave Saddles’ last release, 2022 Tour Tape, will know just how substantive three songs can be. That tape is comprised of two pitch-perfect countrygaze songs and is capped off by a 9-minute rendition of “Minnesota” by The Mountain Goats. Those three tracks combine for a woozy listen that makes a strong case for Grave Saddles as a band and countrygaze as a concept.

The band’s latest collection of tracks is called There You Ain't and drops on May 23rd via Really Rad Records. Lead single “​​Willie Nelson Golfing Dream #3” will be available on all streaming services tomorrow. 

Hater's Delight – April 2023

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April is a useless month for useless people. You’ve got Easter (I guess), taxes, and a holiday for stoners, all of which combine with some of the year’s most temperamental weather to make for an absolutely miserable stretch of 30 days. At least spring will be here soon, and we can all be unhappy in slightly warmer weather. 

If you’re just now joining us for the first time, Hater’s Delight is a monthly micro-review column brought to you by our team of Swim Into The Sound writers and a guest or two. This is a space where we can vent about the things online and in music that have gotten under our skin this past month. Each writer gets a paragraph to bitch about their chosen topic, then once we expel the Haterade from our systems, we all go back to loving music and enjoying art. Speaking of which, if you’re more in the mood for some positivity, here’s a playlist of all this month’s new releases that I enjoyed (or at least found notable) to help you keep up on everything that’s happened in April. 

Without further ado, let’s get all our complaints about April out before we flip the calendars over. 

BOYGENIUS

Each of these artists makes decent-to-middling pop-rock on their own time (Dacus decent, Baker between, Bridgers middling); that they must also fill my social media feed as a unit is frankly a waste of both my time as a viewer and your time as a poster. With such a massive profile (and a guaranteed sold-out arena tour arranged by their "not-so" major record label with ex-indie cred), the discourse is superfluous. "The Record" was never going to be a "flop." The stans (their parents?) will sell the vinyl out, sell the t-shirt out, sell the shows out, etc., regardless of lyrical fumbles, repetitive themes, poorly sequenced tracks, or cloyingly sweet marketing. There is no worthwhile angle regarding this fucking band. You can listen to it, but I wanna fucking talk about something else. (People who talked about it well: Miranda Reinert, as always, and SITS’ own Grace Robins-Somerville.)

SUB-HATE:
To the writer who dissed “Girls” by The Dare last month: I hope you never feel the loving touch of a woman. Song rocks – officially signed and endorsed by a lesbian.

Mikey Montoni – @dumpsterbassist 


Trippin’ On The Name Of A Metal Fest

Let me preface this by saying that I love the Texas band Power Trip just like any other hesher. Riley Gale (RIP) was undeniably one of the most iconic frontmen of his era. The remaining members of Power Trip have been fairly quiet since Riley’s passing, other than the exciting new band Fugitive featuring guitarist Blake Ibanez. But the band has had quite a bit of coverage in the first weeks of April. They announced the physical release of their Live In Seattle album, to many fans’ underwhelm, and simply tweeted out “no” in response to the Power Trip festival announcement featuring AC/DC, Guns N’ Roses, Iron Maiden, Metallica, Ozzy Osbourne, and Tool. Many Power Trip band diehards came to the band’s defense, but let’s take this seriously for a moment. The likely realities of the situation are: 1) the people who put this thing together have never heard of Power Trip, the band. 2) Other than being a common idiom where they got their name, “Power Trip” has been used in heavy music for decades before the band you know the most. Cleveland metal outfit Chimaira released a song called “Power Trip” in 2004, stoner rock luminaries Monster Magnet had their Powertrip album in 1998, and there was even an ‘80s band in Power Trip’s exact subgenre (“crossover,” combining elements of hardcore punk and thrash metal) called Powertrip featuring members of underground LA punk bands Angry Samoans and Würm. So, to the hardcore kids that not only wouldn’t go to the Power Trip festival anyway, but likely couldn’t afford it either, there’s nothing to trip about here. 

SUB-HATE:
Hardcore bands, let’s retire the tradition of one-word band names. It was easier in the ‘80s and ‘90s when you just banked on someone else not having your name idea. Now you can very easily do a Google or Discogs search. California band Fury is the 28th known artist with that name, for fuck’s sake. Find something that stands out. 

Logan Archer Mounts – @VERTICALCOFFIN


People on Music Twitter Pretending to Hate Music Twitter Discourse

Like everyone else who contributes to this column and everyone who reads it (yes, that includes you), I spend a lot of time (definitely too much time) talking about music on Twitter. There’s this pattern– especially in online forums that are simultaneously fragmented and insular –of everyone getting thrown into a tizzy over a bad-faith comment, a bad-faith reading of a good-faith comment, a divisive issue, an actually-not-that-divisive issue, a hot take, a cold take, a lukewarm take, etc; talking it to death, and then complaining about the people who are talking it to death. And don’t get me wrong, I’ve read enough insipid online music drama to turn my brain into a slushie, but don’t pretend to hate the discourse while you eat it up like the little piggy that you are. Or, in between two stupid discourse cycles, complain about how Twitter is “boring now,” barely betraying your need for more ragebait. Either admit to yourself that part of you likes getting mad online (again, why do you think this column exists?) or take a walk outside without your phone for a few minutes (ever the multitude-container, I did BOTH of these things just today and I feel FUCKING GREAT). 

Bottom Line: Don’t go to the circus for news and get mad when you hear it from clowns. You love this shit. 

Grace Robins-Somerville – @grace_roso


The Big Re-Do

If you were to ask me what my favorite Drive-By Truckers song is, I’m sure I’d have different answers depending on my mood or the season, but usually, I say “Puttin’ People on The Moon” from their opus, The Dirty South. Hood’s raspy voice and strong storytelling portray a character driven to crime by a hostile political hellscape. The song felt powerful in 2004 but feels even more necessary 20 years later. Now, Drive-By Truckers are reissuing a “director’s cut” of The Dirty South, with additional songs left off the record and some new recordings. This brings me to my issue—they have re-recorded the vocals of “Puttin’ People on The Moon,” and they’ve made it worse.

Don’t get me wrong, every artist has the right to do whatever they want with their work, but DBT are calling this version of “Puttin’ People on The Moon” definitive? Hood’s vocal take 20 years ago is nasally and raspy, yet full of desperation, anger, and anxiety. He is fully embodying the character he is portraying. Though Hood’s voice is still strong two decades later, there is no improvement found on this reworked version. If anything, the confident and cleaner vocal take (still raspy, less nasally) softens the blow of the song’s message. All this is to say I don’t think I can justify the $46 for the director’s cut of one of my favorite albums. I’m reminded of the 1990s George Lucas Star Wars edits or Donnie Darkos’ director’s cut. You’ve maybe added some deleted scenes, but you’ve touched up the practical effects with CGI, and it sticks out like a sore thumb. 

Russ Finn – @RussFinn


Closing songs as singles 

You want to know what I do whenever I start a new book? First, I find a nice, quiet place where I can read undisturbed. Then I sit down, crack the book open, and read the very last chapter. Just kidding, I don’t do that because I’m not a fucking psychopath. Why, then, are some bands so insistent on releasing the final song from their album as a single? It happened a few times this month, including one of my all-time favorite bands (who will remain unnamed), and the song wasn’t even that good! I mean, theoretically, shouldn’t the last song be a sort of big, anthemic closer that sends off the whole release? A summation of every track that came before it? Your big final number? Why would you want to drop that song weeks before people can hear it as intended? Obviously, not every album is a sequential story that you can “spoil” the same way you would with a book, but I don’t understand the logic of releasing a song like that by itself. The artist likely spent months creating, recording, and sequencing these songs, so why give away your final curtain call before people have even had a chance to enjoy the whole thing? This is really only a problem for dorks like me who keep up with singles as bands release them, but even for a casual fan, there’s gotta be some sense of letdown if you get to the end of your favorite artist’s new album and your first reaction is “I’ve already heard this one.” Let’s plan out our singles a little better, people. 

Taylor Grimes – @GeorgeTaylorG


Expecting Anything Of A Band

Frank Ocean – Have you heard of this guy? He had a whole ice rink, and some other stuff happened during his performance at some festival in Indio, CA, a few weeks back. A lot of people got very upset that Frank Ocean’s whole Coachella performance was slapdash and “not what [they] paid for.” Bro, you paid for a weekend of debauchery under the guise of attending a music festival! Did you think everything was going to go exactly to plan? What happens when something else in your life goes a little haywire? Do you check the receipt and ask to speak to the manager? Even worse than that, I saw complaints that Frank didn’t play specific songs! *whiny suburban music nerd voice* “Oh man, can you believe he didn’t play (deep unreleased cut from the Nostalgia Ultra era that I found on Tumblr in 2012)??” YES. YES, I CAN. He probably doesn’t remember the lyrics to a song that he threw aside 11 years ago. This isn’t your show, and you are NOT the main character for every event you pay money to see! Every time you pay for a ticket to a show, you are rolling the dice that something could go poorly. The smoke alarm could get set off by a fog machine, your favorite artist could get food poisoning, you could get an imposter instead of MF DOOM. All of these things are possible, and you hope they don’t happen, but sometimes it does not meet your expectations. Doesn’t that make the story a little more fun to you? It is more interesting to say, “I was at the Snowing reunion show where John Galm got pissed and spiked his bass into the ground,” than, “Oh yeah, I saw Snowing one time. Pretty good band!” Buy the ticket, enjoy the ride.

Jay Papandreas  – @listenupnerds

Ness Lake – i lean in to hear you sing / bl0ss0m | Single Premiere

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SELF-released

Like many people, the first time I went to New York was an event. Not only was I going to visit the greatest city in the world for the first time at the ripe age of 28, but I was also going to visit my long-distance girlfriend and meet her family. It was a lot to take in, prep for, and look forward to. At the time, I was fresh off a Succession binge and even had my own little dorky playlist of New York-themed songs to hype myself up for the journey. I had no idea what to expect, but the trip went swimmingly. My girlfriend, a NY native, took me all over Brooklyn and Manhattan; I saw Coney Island, walked across the Brooklyn Bridge, and ate some of the best meals I’ve ever had in my life. One night I also had a drug-induced panic attack.

In a classic case of not knowing my limits, one night, I found myself wide awake at 3 am, petrified with fear, staring at the ceiling of our Air BnB as she slept soundly beside me. Physically everything was perfect and still, but the inside of my head was a panicky horror movie where I was continually experiencing my own death. Eventually, my restlessness woke her up, and I had to explain what was going on. In a moment of complete compassion and love, she put on some Yo La Tengo and sleepily talked me through another hour or so of Generally Bad Vibes until we both passed out in the early hours of the morning. 

This was a formative experience for me and not something I ever want to put myself or my partner through ever again. It was also a pivotal moment in my relationship – this person I’d only known for a few months was sweet and caring enough to talk me through this experience. It was love. 

The newest songs from Ness Lake stem from a similar brush with the psyche that bandleader Chandler Lach experienced at the end of 2021. After experiencing the intense realization that all relationships ultimately end in either breakups or death, Lach began reflecting on the series of failed relationships that led him to this point in his life. 

Anyone that’s had even one relationship gone south can likely relate to concluding that they are the problem. Of course, every relationship (should be) 50/50, and the weight can never entirely be placed upon one person’s shoulders, but still, when one finds themselves looking back at a string of bad breakups and failed partnerships, it’s hard not to think that you are the common denominator. As Lach puts it, he grew to expect every relationship to fail and learned to avoid vulnerability in the process. 

His solution? Lean in. 

“i lean in to hear you sing” is the title track, lead single, and mantra-like sentiment that Lach has been returning to ever since that panic attack he experienced two years ago. In the wake of these personal realizations (and the dissolution of yet another relationship), he arrived at the conclusion that “leaning in” and committing is the answer. 

It’s easy to avoid intimacy, love, or a real relationship when you’re sure it’s going to fail from the outset. It’s also easy to find yourself in a “relationship” that is more emulation than truthfully sharing yourself with another person. You can feel like you’re getting all the benefits of a relationship on paper, but it’s merely a superficial checking of boxes that robs you of genuine connection. 

“i lean in to hear you sing” is a melodic and earwormy bedroom emo song with a chorus that has embedded itself deep in my brain after only a few listens. First laid out in a demo two years ago, the mind behind Ness Lake spent the intervening time returning to his own words and bringing them to life through multiple iterations, eventually culminating in this final version of the song. 

According to Lach, he and Marco Aziel (of Kiss Your Friends) spent about two years wringing the best out of these songs, thinking through every single aspect of the music, and figuring out how these sentiments could come to life visually. The music video is a kaleidoscopic swirl of colors pulled directly off the album art, all pulsating in time with the music as hand-written MS Paint lyrics guide the viewer past 3D Blender models and home video footage.

The second part of the band’s new double single is “bl0ss0m,” a tune that first appeared on an EP called marry the moon in 2021. While the first version of this song was a shaky and inward acoustic track, the newer rendition is considered and confident with electronic elements that sputter to life over the course of its three minutes. When compared to its original incarnation, “bl0ss0m” ends up being a perfect showcase for the artistic and personal growth that its creator has undergone in the intervening years. 

Similarly concerned with love and connection as its counterpart, “bl0ss0m” is about how you have to work for the beauty and love you find in your life. In Lach’s words, “If the conditions aren’t right, you have to be prepared for things to die.” Again, this song strikes upon the notion that your relationships have to be an intentional endeavor. In this way, both “i lean in to hear you sing” and “bl0ss0m” are perfect companions.  

Together these two tracks make an exciting update from Ness Lake and provide a perfect amuse-bouche for the project’s upcoming 14th album, which releases in-full next week on May 4th. Both “i lean in to hear you sing” and “bl0ss0m” will be available on all streaming services tomorrow.

 
 

Jesus Piece – ...So Unknown | Album Review

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Century Media Records

There’s a spotlight on hardcore these days that is undeniable. Even if you’re only passively following the genre, it’s hard to avoid the hype. What’s interesting about this broader attention is that, historically, heavier music has been a much more underground style and therefore hasn’t typically attracted as many open eyes and ears. Nowadays, mostly thanks to TikTok and other social media, people don’t have to try as hard to discover art that falls outside the usual commercial guidelines of what is consumable and proven to sell to the masses. The combination of the “Turnstile Effect” and social media algorithms means that people who never would’ve previously considered engaging with the scene now have a foot in the door. To top it all off, there’s a virtually endless stream of live footage exposing countless bands to new audiences, maybe even more than the albums those bands release. All of this feels considered, understood, and taken into account on Jesus Piece’s heavy and determined second LP …So Unknown.

From the second the record starts, there is no breathing room. “In Constraints” kicks things off with vocalist Aaron Heard roaring the opening lines by himself for a matter of seconds before the full band stampedes in behind him, and things don’t let up once from there. Track after track, we’re beaten, pummeled, battered, and bruised by crushing riffs, thunderous drums, harrowing growls, and screams spitting pissed-off anthems of exhaustion and fighting through malaise. In all honesty, the relentlessness of it all washed over me with little effect the first few times I sat with the album. It goes hard. It goes very hard, but it didn’t connect much deeper for me at first. However, I know myself well enough to know I can be a hard sell. I have a joke amongst my friends where I claim that I don’t like movies anymore due to how picky and over convention I am. I didn’t dislike this record by any means, but something felt a bit distant. It wasn’t until I threw the album on while working out that things began to click for me a bit more.

What is apparent on …So Unknown is that Jesus Piece have written a conscious and active album that speaks directly to the crowds they’re playing to and will be playing to in the future. These crowds will range from the TikTok kids who are there because they saw a wild video online and want to experience it for themselves to 30-somethings like me who’ve always had a foot in the scene. I’m not going to front and say I throwdown in the pit. I can’t lie and claim I have a history of doing so whatsoever. I’ve been going to heavy shows since I was 14, but even in my younger days, I always admired them at arm’s length. I like a rowdy audience and a good crowd surf as much as the next guy, but the inherent violence that comes with a proper pit isn’t something I’ve felt compelled to experience firsthand. I’m content as a present observer. These songs weren’t written for me. They’re first and foremost written for the band members to expel and push themselves to darker and heavier depths, but they’re also clearly written to pop the fuck off live. These songs were written to soundtrack bodies in motion.

“FTBS” may be the best example of this, with its driving pace and call to “fuck the bullshit” if you don’t like what you’re hearing. Or take a song like “Fear of Failure,” whose sinister opening riff moves effortlessly into the crushing, doom-paced breakdown of the ending. There’s not a complacent moment on the record. Jesus Piece see what’s in front of them and are attacking it head-on. Every song needs to hit, so every song hits. The only real instance of any kind of reprieve is found in “Silver Lining,” a track that finds Heard ruminating on the deep love he has for his child. Even so, it would still be the hardest track on a lesser band’s album. 

I truly feel that any song from …So Unknown could’ve been a single, and that feels by design. There are countless Finn McKenty-types who will wax poetic about how “the album” is dead and the algorithm is capital G God these days but as much as I hate to admit it, they have a point. As a musician myself, I understand the reality of releasing music in 2023. Singles are king, but albums still matter, and it’s comforting to see a band understand and appreciate this. …So Unknown offers a tight 28 minutes of hardcore, and while it can feel a bit one note at times, it really grew on me even in the short time I’ve spent with it, and I am glad I gave it the time and space to do so. Putting this record into the context of physical movement really amplified my experience and has made me eager to witness it the way it was intended - in a room surrounded by a few hundred people all climbing over each other and screaming, “FUCK THE BULLSHIT!”

Christian Perez is a member of the band Clot and is always trying his best to exist gently.