These celestial sounds are contrasted by familiar field recordings, birds chirping and windy breezes grounding the record in the here and now, this point of orientation anchoring the body in presently lived experience while the Quintet spins further into dizziness.

The album The Verse Perverse by wretched fool, foolish wretch reflects on the aftershocks of mass industrialism on ecology and human wellness with a mix of genres like dungeon synth, industrial metal, and avant-noise stuff.

Every ounce of this album, sonically, lyrically, and compositionally, outright refuses complacency, confronting and assimilating capitalist guilt into a worldview that radically rejects all forms of injustice.

However, a force from beyond even the band’s control immediately shoves us back into this constricting chamber, shattering the illusion of movement and reminding us of the underlying, unchanging material conditions that always win out over those brief bursts of manufactured excitement.

Perhaps should this album have been composed a year later, we would hear more of its desperate moments of krautrock chaos, vocalizing those deeply held frustrations that feel too melancholic or complicated to properly put into words.

Where other artists poke fun at overstimulation by exploring its extremes, Estle crafts a meaningful message to serve as a stable core before adding dopaminergic layers, leaning into the TikTok paradigm to comment on life, death, and rebirth in ways that appeal to a new generation.

Black metal represents an outburst of emotional energy, typically tempered as either blindingly euphoric or massively depressive, but the purity of the energy we find in Prolegomenon by Skin Tension plows straight through this emotional fork.

This moment of private fright permeates the dark, smoky soundscapes of Everything Is Simple by Zelienople, an understated, jazzy, spacy drone rock album laden with the most haunted flavor of psychedelic Americana.

Canadian screamo outfit Treehouse of Horror strikes back at this blind spot on their new EP because our days are numbered…, delivering strikingly lucid, realistic, and beautiful portraits of a quarter life crisis anchored on fading childhood friendships.

Biting commentary on the culture of performative evangelism rotted from the inside out plays off jagged and disorienting riffs, intensity rising as the search for meaning grows more desperate. Amidst the chaos moments of divine inspiration strike, melodic grooves a shining light in the darkness.

Decades of divestment from both major political parties and an unambiguously botched exit from the European Union have silenced the hum of the machine to a growing number of ears, relegating the rhythmic hammering and soothing hiss of industrial productivity to a distant memory.

Loudly, colorfully, and flamboyantly rebelling against this stuffy, sweaty alternative misdirection, I Wish You Every Success by Fashion Tips dances circles around the cross-armed cool guys with its riot-grrrl-tinged, vibrantly energetic synth punk sound.

The dynamic slowcore of I Will Turn, I Will, I Will by Sesame perfectly embodies depression as an endless cycle, a thought loop that delivers sustained, increasing pain that feels more similar to a tattoo gun than to an acute injury.

Corporations screech into our ears to turn to their products for help rather than turning to community, a request symbolized here by wailing, alien guitar sounds that loom over violent black metal riffing.

Utilizing tape effects, heavy signal processing, and post production chopping and screwing, the guitars flood the middle frequencies with a sloshing ocean of organic drone, a sea with emotional tides but an unforgiving, constant vastness that ultimately dwarfs all individual agency.

Intricately constructed riffs devolve into thunderous sludgy chugging as the band effortlessly weaves captivating tales tinged by local folklore. And for those who know that such stories were often thinly veiled warnings, Daniel Howard’s emotive growling vocals strike the listener with earth-shaking fear of bestial demise.

Within the walls of an old wooden church, the Western Canadian prairie collapses into a claustrophobic prison, an impenetrable fortress that strangles greatness, presenting self-destruction as the only means of escape.

However, closer examination yields over-the-top playing that screams tragically for our attention from behind a concrete wall, drawing a sharp connection between these alienated sounds and the speaker’s failed attempts at being emotionally understood.

Topping this off-kilter style with lyrics that strike aggressively at some of the most pathetically unempowering, genuinely dark human emotions fosters the creation of anti-anthems.

Using a hip hop songwriting style to deliver conversational lyrics from various perspectives, Yes Plant draws the main line between the decision-makers and the effect-takers as one of apathy, where nihilistic, misanthropic leaders create a desperate, hopeless population.