Imagine crashing your car into a copse of trees. The impact, fierce and sudden, knocks you out cold. Later, you wake in the center of the woods, alone. Blood drips down your face from a gash on your forehead. All around you are howling voices, screams, and unnatural wails. Illuminating it all is a cold, unfeeling light that shines from the darkness. Now imagine that experience again, but somehow it’s exhilarating, exciting, and energizing. It sounds paradoxical, and yet, this is the experience I’ve had with the new “Knocked Loose” album.
I haven’t been this excited about a new album in a long time. I’ve been following Kentucky metalcore act “Knocked Loose” for a few years now, and have been thrilled to see not only their success — they played Coachella in 2023, pretty much unheard of for a band as aggressive as they are — but also their relentless dedication to getting heavier and more grim-sounding with each release. While so many metal and rock bands have switched to a poppier sound as their careers have gone on, “Knocked Loose” has only doubled down on throat-shredding screams, neck-destroying breakdowns, and ominous riffs that leave you haunted as well as headbanging.
The band had made it clear that they weren’t satisfied with the standard beatdown metalcore their career started with, and 2021’s “A Tear in the Fabric of Life” EP saw the band leaning into a much more ambitious and extreme version of their sound. With songs incorporating eerie ambiance and dark lyrics, the band also began to exhibit influences from heavier subgenres such as death metal on this EP, such as blast beats and tremolo-picked riffs. In 2023, they released the standalone “Upon Loss” singles with new producer Drew Fulk (who also engineered this new album), both of which showed them again covering dark topics with blistering ferocity.
Finally, after some fantastic singles leading up to it, we got the band’s third full-length album: “You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To,” a record that discusses personal darkness and reckons with death, loss, and religion. It’s a short listen at less than 30 minutes, but not a second is wasted.
The opening track, “Thirst,” begins with some creepy ambiance that is used as a motif across the record, before bursting into a wall of noise, drums, and pained screaming from frontman and lyricist Brian Garris. It’s a short song that immediately lets you know what you’re in for. Next is “Piece by Piece,” a simple track with a simple but deadly lead riff and a tension-building chorus. Following this is “Suffocate,” a fantastic collaborative cut with a killer feature from alternative artist Poppy, whose high-pitched shrieks blend perfectly with Garris.’ This song is also notable for its reggaeton breakdown, a combination that shouldn’t work nearly as well as it does.
“Don’t Reach For Me” is a stomping mosh-fest that manages to outdo itself with each bruising impact. Sister tracks “Moss Covers All” and “Take Me Home” see the band pushing the eeriness of their sound to an extreme, with uneasy riffage and a noisy, anxious climax that feels anything but resolved when it finishes out. “Slaughterhouse 2” features Chris Motionless of fellow metalcore band Motionless in White who gives a great vocal performance, as well as some scathing commentary on capitalism and the uber-wealthy.
The final leg of the record has some of its best moments. “The Calm That Keeps You Awake” is probably my favorite track here, with a fantastic buildup that leads into a crushing two-step breakdown that feels like being inside a cave collapsing on top of you. Lead single “Blinding Faith” pulls out all the stops with its biting lyrics about religious fanaticism, rapid-fire riff passages, and feedback-filled ending. The album’s closer, “Sit and Mourn,” is no less heavy, but more so emotionally than sonically. It is grand, emotional, and climactic, with genuinely heart-wrenching lyrics and vocal samples that make this finisher feel grimly open-ended like a mind still lost in mourning despite the trials it has been through. “Grief that spreads but will not show/ Every season weighed by all we went through/ Brought back by a voice unknown/ You won’t go before you’re supposed to.” The aforementioned vocal sample (taken from an episode of “The Sinner”) ends the record with “‘Why’d you leave? I feel like I’ve failed.’” It’s a haunting ending.
“You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To” is not an accessible album if you aren’t into metal, but I highly recommend it to anyone, especially fans of metal and metalcore in particular. It’s incredibly rare that I find the experience that a piece of art provides to be perfect, but “Knocked Loose” has done it. This is a resounding 10/10 for me and undoubtedly will go down as my album of the year.
Let me know if there are any albums, new or old, that you’d like me to cover in the future! Or, if you want to give your perspective, write your own album review and send it to the Campus Times!
