7 Skramz & Sass Records to Fly Your Wig

Floating Woods is a young, promising and upcoming band from Münster, Germany. They went through a drastic change after playing anti-folk tunes from debut EP just a year ago. This year they have put out their latest EP Equilibration.

My wig flew out of the fucking window thinking about how amazed I am after listening to this EP through Reddit. The true essence of skramz is very strong in this very release. Sounds almost like every mix of screamo legends you could think of. Orchid, Jeromes Dream, Louise Cyphre, you name it.

Six tracks just have enough fury, intensity and raw cacophony to hold on through the rest of the short record. Various kinds of shrieks are thrown all over the place in desperation, anger, sadness, and confusion. It is indeed a satisfying appetite for every screamo/emoviolence fan to hear. Just give it a try!

2018 has just begun for the Swedish screamo scene. A few upcoming bands have come to take a new turn for the better, and that is with Kid, Feral to be exact. They just have put out their debut LP through Dog Knights Productions.

Kid, Feral is literally a more enraged counterpart of Suis La Lune. Speaking of which, SLL leans more on melodramatic atmosphere, while on Kid’s side it is more of a rather riveting, uncontrollable rage. Lo-fi fury ingrained in reverbed vocals amid walls of sound of dancey passionate punk rock, with the exception of chilly two interludes, who are just in the way of clearing away the tensions.

Kid, Feral has just got started with this LP and they deserve much of connections to those with broken dreams and broken hearts, especially those still cursed with skinny jeans and fringe hairs. So dance off your skinny jeans, swing away your fringe haircut and overall cry on the floor.

SeeYouSpaceCowboy is a four-piece sass-grind from San Francisco, California, featuring members of Letters of Catatonia, René Descartes, and Flowers Taped To Pens. I remember being torn apart listening to their demo in 2016. It was really wild. Think of it as Daughters, Heavy Heavy Low Low and a little dose of Number 12 in the blender and this is the result of the mixture.

SYSC is also a part of the sass revival, along with Black Knight Satellite, Terrifying Girls’ High School, Gas Up Yr Hearse, .gif from god and The Cambodian Heat (early). I happen to be really passionate on sasscore thanks to my personal favorite, The Blood Brothers, so that’s why I look up to bands like these.

Moving on, SYSC had just released their seven-inch Fashion Statements of the Socially Aware in 2017, and the album is streaming today. I quickly clicked over to their site to check it out and it was quite impressive. More polished mathcore with sassy elements much like Heavy Heavy Low Low, sassy enough to dance around in a bloodbath discotheque.

Though I’m kinda sad that it doesn’t have the crazy, raw screamo spirit that their demo had. Maybe I am thinking too much of the chaos, but hey, the end of “Albert Camus is My Life Coach” impressed me so much. Still, this seven-inch may not do justice to their demo, but their passionate mathcore technique has improved.

At least Sass is a vampire. A vampire that will never die.

I would be the first to admit that I did NOT expect to have my day darken so fast when this cursed thing from Quebec’s Commuovere just came out of nowhere, waiting to be unraveled on our ears. They shifted rapidly from Suis La Lune-esque “Nothing Burns The Cold” (off our most respectfully made “Enjoy Life To This”) to a straightforward, distortedly messy, chaotic blackened screamo.

In this EP, we have misty guitars (with the exception of bass), frantic drums and shrieky, banshee like vocals on first and third tracks. Between them we also have a sweet, tremolo-ridden interlude floating in the middle of the ocean’s sadness and the need to disappear.

Du besoin de disparaître de soi is an EP to literally throw me off no matter how desperate, no matter how exactly chaotic and helpless it is. It is usually a three minute takedown into isolation and the need to survive through this stigma. I am betting you that this type of sound would somehow be its new signature of Quebec screamo, no matter how long it takes for us to laid to rest.

Terrifying Girls’ High School, consisting of Black Knight Satellite, DBLSTNDRDS, Raccoon Eyes and Dog Thermos, come from Vancouver of British Columbia. Their music is that of a mixture of post-hardcore, screamo, art punk and is reminiscent of Three One G renaissance classics like Swing Kids, The Locust, The Plot to Blow Up The Eiffel Tower and The Blood Brothers and also a part of the Sass revival in 2016.

On our way of listening to one of their tracks “Dust Up at Cthulhu Saloon” as they open themselves for us. In our ears, we are being painted with the trails of funky and colorful growing pain(t)s and bassy paintbrushes whipping our faces while we are overhearing the ramblings of a mad painter until everything gets thrown at us in a such chaotic level. So much for ‘staying alive’?

Next onto “Picking Poisons” were there’s two vocals than on the previous tracks, causing an amazing avalanche of wordy paranoia and fear, much to the nods of The Plot to Blow the Eiffel Tower. Lyrically, one vocalists speaks of a cocaine addiction and the other is talking about a nightmarish scenario of being stuck in a perilous situation.

I am in favor of hitting replay over and over again until i get sassed up for the rest of my adulthood. Looking through to hear more from them. I mean MORE!

Indiana’s finest label Middle Man Records have had released a fascinating seven-inch split consisting of Det är därför vi bygger städar from Sweden and Coma Regalia from America.

On the Darfor side, they open with twinkly tunes of their track “Alla Mina Vänner” in the vein of Saetia, I Hate Myself and… Wait, did I just say that. Well, yeah. During their second half, the vocalist started yelping and is being followed by a psychological breaking point of crescendos. This is an ultimate of surprise for anyone (especially newcomers) who did not expect this kind of explosion. After the attack stops, the vocalist mourns one more time till the song finishes its job.

The following track we are heading onto is “An Apology” by Coma Regalia. The way of their playing is a very passionate melodic screamo in the veins of The Saddest Landscape, Helen of Troy and The Spirit of Versailles. What else can I say, it’s five intense minutes of incredibly raw passion of punk.

After the trip to Italy, I came back home to finally get some rest. When suddenly, a friend of mine sent me a clip of a post-rock/screamo band The Hope and the Failure from Sweden playing live at Miss the Stars in Germany, and I was screaming at the top of my lungs, like a raging #1 fangirl (or boy? lol). I was excited and angry at the same time because I was surprised that the band I loved so much has returned, and that I have thought MTS would only gather bands that I’m not too keen on.

And then came out this new split (released on lifeisafunnything records) with a group of Calgary Canuck’s Heavy Weather. I was so fucking stoked to hear it and it turned out to be brilliantly executed.

The split opens with Heavy Weather’s track “A Slow Rant About Distance”, where they slowly reveal themselves from an upbeat dreamy ambient/post-rock sequence to chaotic quasi-black metal heartbeats.

The Hope’s side, on the other hand, is a brilliant comeback after 11 years of disappearance (not to mention, a few of the members’ involvement with Heart On My Sleeve). The raw passion in Ina’s voice is alive and well. The music started what The Hope had kept in with their The Lights are On… EP and then crashed to a ‘doomed’ breakdown, which is kinda different and new to me to hear from The Hope and the Failure.