The Front Bottoms, blackbear, and Fit For A King, oh my!
This month I’m going to do something a little bit different. Traditionally I have reasonably long playlists to offer to showcase the new music I’ve been listening to for the month, but for the month of August, my attempt at that same playlist is four tracks long. That won’t do! So, instead of going through those four songs, some of which may or may not have been released in August as singles, I’m going to highlight two albums and an EP that were released in August that I think deserve the attention! Let’s get to it!
In Sickness & in Flames — The Front Bottoms
I recently wrote about how Going Grey was one of my favorite albums of the 2010’s. Since I’ve gotten into The Front Bottoms over the past few years I’ve immersed myself in whatever new music they’ve released, and have been excited for this new album since I heard “camouflage” back in December.
For me though the stand out track has been “everyone blooms,” the second single, released in April.
Of the non-single tracks, one that I love is “new song d.” It’s the longest track on the album, which I don’t enjoy as much since I’ve started listening more to punk, indie and emo than when I was mostly listening to hard rock and heavy metal, but TFB does good things with the time they spend in this song.
Everything Means Nothing — blackbear
Before I ever really paid attention to blackbear I first heard him on a Mike Shinoda track — “About You” ofc — and at some point his music started cropping up on my “Release Radar” playlist on Spotify.
First it was “hot girl bummer,” which was first released a year ago. I was having a pretty bummer summer when it came out, so when I listened to “hot girl bummer” and all of the “fuck yous” that blackbear dropped, I was raising up a middle finger to my shitty summer and the world that made it so.
And then it was “me & ur ghost,” but the track that really stuck out to me was “queen of broken hearts.” I don’t like the music video for this song, and so I didn’t feature this song last month, but it has been a force on my rotation, so I cannot deny it! blackbear sings “I’m the queen of broken hearts,” and I loved that sort of taking on of the character of this queen of broken hearts, even though of course blackbear seems to be lamenting some sort of falling out. I may not love the song as much in a year, but that’s my own problem of overthinking!
Annihilation — Fit For A King
Fit For a King came on my radar with “Backbreaker” off of their 2018 album Dark Skies. Their return with this latest EP impresses again. The title track, which also serves as the opener of the EP, is a fresh slab of metalcore that is unrelenting from start to finish. The second track “Locked (In My Head)” breaks out the clean vocals. “God of Fire” starts with some electronics, which is an interesting change of pace. The vocals are muted and staticky for the first half of the song before breaking into full-on metalcore unclean vocals. The EP closes out with the track “Breaking the Mirror,” which is a straight-forward metalcore song. Gone are the electronic influences and the experimental staticky vocals. It’s straightforward clean-unclean-clean vocals with a great guitar solo, gang vocals, and a breakdown to move the song along.
It’s unlikely that all three of these albums will be for everyone, but hopefully if you’re reading this at least one of them will be up your alley! If not, check out this playlist I’ve made of TFB, blackbear, and FFAK songs. It mostly features their new stuff, but has at least two songs for each band/artist of stuff not on the albums or EPs featured here. Happy listening!
