Chasing Fridays: Azshara, 7 mini reviews, Lala Lala Q&A, more

Hello hello. Allow me to plug a couple recent writings of mine before getting into the meat of this week's newsletter. First, I reviewed Angel Du$t's new album for Pitchfork last week, which was fun not only because I like Angel Du$t, but also because I got to sneak a few Trapped Under Ice references in there. Second, I wrote an essay about rising metal-ish star Bilmuri, whose memey videos and genre-blurring songs are launching him into the upper decks of a genre that's becoming nearly unrecognizable from what it was 10 years ago. And that's saying a lot. People on Twitter either loved or hated that piece, and I'm pretty happy with how it came out, so give it a read even if you don't know what the fuck I'm talking about (I lay it out pretty clearly, I think).

Bilmuri, slob brainrot, and the triumph of meme metal

The one-man pop-metalcore meme star is among the biggest acts in modern metal. Is the culture cooked or am I simply too old to get it?

Chasing SundaysEli Enis

And now onto this week's Chasing Fridays. I've been listening to a lot of new music lately that hasn't inspired an abundance of thoughts in my noggin, so I decided to reignite my "7 mini reviews" format and weigh in on seven new releases in one short paragraph or less. I also went longer on a great new split from Azshara and Unmoved, two of the best bands in hardcore, and delivered a somewhat brutal takedown of a hyperpop record that's being disproportionately glazed in certain corners of the internet. Gotta keep it real with, ya'll, or why else would this be worth reading every week? Lastly, I interviewed Lala Lala about her return to indie-rock, which was cool because I've liked her music for a long time now and I hope her new LP doesn't fly under the radar. It's great.

Azshara, Unmoved - Cold Blooded Tag Team

Azshara and Unmoved are two of my favorite heavy hardcore bands in the game right now, and I never would've thought to put them together on a split, which is part of what makes this such a cool release to me. Azshara are a Syracuse band who make "angel statue metalcore," as it's derogatorily become called in recent months. The phrase kind of speaks for itself: metalcore bands who put moody images of angel tombstone statues on their cover art and pull influence from late-90s metalcore bands like Undying and Prayer for Cleansing. No one who actually likes metalcore would derisively sling the "angel statue" barb at Azshara because a) their 2023 demo, which does in fact feature an angel statue on its cover, preceded all of the bands who've recently hopped on the trend. And b) Azshara are probably the second best metalcore band of the 2020s, outmatched only by Balmora, who share at least one member with Azshara.

Unmoved are a different beast entirely. I loved the Vancouver band's 2025 demo, which sounds a little bit like Meshuggah's juddering djent and a little bit like All Else Failed's uncanny mathcore. They're not a metalcore band, at least not in the way Azshara are a metalcore band, but both of these acts indeed make for one Cold Blooded Tag Team. Despite their differences in approach, Azshara and Unmoved are both metallic hardcore bands who specialize in unusual song structures, nasty riffwork, and bone-shattering mosh parts. When I initially reviewed Azshara's 2025 EP, Ashen Skies, I was a little cool on it, but those songs actually grew on me a lot last year, especially after catching Azshara live a couple times. I know Azshara's contributions to this split, "Cradle of Dawn" and "Nocturne," will go crazy live, but I don't need to see them set a pit alight for them to click. I'm already sold on their melodeath-but-make-it-spinkickable effectiveness.

Unmoved's two songs are going to take a little bit more time to grow on me than their demo did. I think part of why Demonstration worked so well was because Unmoved had five tracks to play with on there, and they were really intentional with how the record flowed. The transitions were seamless and the band's jerky sound, oscillating between taut breakdowns and angular riffs with stone-faced efficiency, felt like getting whipped around the trailer of an eighteen wheeler. Their songs on this split are even more angry and intense, and there are times when the drum fills are so dizzying that I feel like the truck has left the road entirely and is now tumbling down a ravine. They're so disorienting that I almost don't remember what I've heard by the time they're over. That's not so much a criticism as it an admission that Unmoved's music kind of intimidates me. Historically, my favorite hardcore bands are the ones who intimidate me.

stripmallravestarrr - halo

Something that always impresses me about hardcore kids is their commitment to knowing the genre inside out. I'm constantly amazed by how people five or 10 years younger than me know all of the obscure metalcore bands from the early 2000s, or all of the local youth crew bands from the late 90s, or are able to pinpoint specific references that modern bands sneak into their songs as Easter egg callbacks to prior hardcore totems. It's genuinely very humbling to follow a scene where the average hardcore head knows more about that particular genre than I'll ever know about any one of the genres I cover in my work. But every now and then, I'm reminded of why hardcore superfans are able to accumulate so much minutia about their special interest. It's because they don't know a goddamn thing about other genres. Specifically, they have questionable taste in non-hardcore music.

stripmallravestarrr are a Florida duo who are signed to Sunday Drive Records, a hardcore-ish label who I root for even though I either dislike or am indifferent to 90% of their catalog (the upcoming Alovesopure record is one I'm stoked on, though). stripmallravestarrr's members, vocalist Beth Nutter and producer Jesse Innie, have some kind of connection with the Florida hardcore scene that I can't quite figure out, but I've seen so many people on a certain hardcore-focused music rating app going all in on this record to a degree that I find astounding. None of my hyperpop friends or electronic music nerd pals seem to know that halo dropped last week (it doesn't even have a Rate Your Music listing yet), but people in the hardcore scene (again, most certainly because of this duo's social connection with that world) are geeking over it.

This perplexes me because I don't think halo is a good record. Although the label generously pegged it as being FFO: Charli XCX and Crystal Castles, these songs remind me more of PC Music stalwarts like Hannah Diamond and Planet 1999, except with production that is much, much more simplistic. Most of the beats thump at a mid-tempo garagey pulse, offering little to no variation in BPM or any dynamic variance within the soundscapes themselves. Every synth shimmers at the same frequency, every bass note hits with the same dull patter. Nutter's vocals aren't any more compelling. She makes auto-tune, one of the most creative and liberating instruments in modern music, sound static. Every bleat is delivered in a squeaky yet sullen register that doesn't sound robotically uncanny, but mechanically disinterested.

The hooks are non-existent, and her pitchy emo whines in "get well soon" and "misconstrued" are borderline unlistenable. Once again, the auto-tune isn't used to wring additional emotions out of her voice or artistically exaggerate specific quirks. There are no quirks on halo. The essential qualities of hyperpop – animated characters, oddball production choices, hyper-fucking-pop hooks – are nowhere to be found. halo is everything hyperpop shouldn't be: safe, sterile, boring, predictable. I may not be able to identify every On Broken Wings cover I see at hardcore shows, but I've heard enough glitched-out and pitched-up electro-pop since Pop 2 to know mid when I hear it.

7 mini-reviews...

I've done this format a few times now so I've decided to go ahead and make it a recurring series. Basically, I weigh in on a bunch of new stuff – seven releases, to be precise – that I've been listening to lately but don't have enough thoughts on to flesh out into full reviews.

Joyce Manor - I Used to Go to This Bar

1. Never Hungover Again
2. Joyce Manor
3. Cody
4. I Used to Go to This Bar
5. Million Dollars to Kill Me
6. 40 Oz. To Fresno
7. Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired

dream fatigue - no requiem

I was pretty ruthless when I reviewed dream fatigue's live show along with the lead single from this EP, "be your anchor," which I still think is a totally unremarkable song. But credit where it's due: the remainder of no requiem is more interesting than basically every other band in this post-hardcore/grunge-gaze/alt-metal demolition zone. "astral stomp" has some pretty spine-tingling wails and a weird bridge in the middle that highlights Matt Wood's superior drumming. The lighter tracks on the project, the slowcore "codeine lullaby" and the piano-laden "control," which has flecks of Tidal-era Fiona Apple in there, are also solid. It's not something I'll return to, but it's definitely better than Fleshwater.

MPTL Microplastics - Sod In Heaven

Archie Forde's Quietus review of this record made me really excited to hear it, as MPTL Microplastics (that's "My Pussy Tastes Like," by the way) are something of a secret handshake in the London underworld right now. I can hear why. These songs are so bizarre, freaky, uncomfortable, yet also so grooving, so visceral, so exotically alluring. This is arty post-punk that makes the whole Windmill scene sound like quaint dad-rock in comparison. If you listen to "Sex/Pol" and aren't bobbing your head like Jay-Z by the end then you have serious work to do.

fakemink - The Boy who cried Terrified.

I think these songs are pretty boring to be honest. If I'm being really honest, I haven't really been moved by a fakemink song since "easter pink," which seems to be a party pep outlier in this catalog. I think these songs are fine when they're on and then totally ooze from my memory and evaporate into figments of bored boasts over crispy beats that would be better served by a more compelling performer. At this point, I'm more intrigued by EsDeeKid than fakemink. There's a dearth of urgency in fakemink's delivery that makes his songs feel disposable, even if they're pleasant enough for a cheap minute-and-a-half thrill.

Ratboys - Singin' to an Empty Chair

To borrow the title of a recent Pitchfork profile, Ratboys have been playing the long game. Each album has been a little better than the last. Their sound has become a little more refined, a little more graceful, a little more unexpectedly powerful. I can't think of any other modern indie band who've improved so consistently. I can't think of any reason to not proclaim that Singin' to an Empty Chair is their best. ​​Until the next one, probably.

Worm - Necropalace

I never really cared for this band until I saw them live a couple years ago and the singer drank fake blood out of a skull and the whole band ripped harder than the headliner I went to the show for. Then I was sold, and Necropalace isn't giving me buyer's remorse. Worm tone down the death-doom churn and ramp up the symphonic black-metal bluster on this record, which is well and fine with me as someone who likes Dimmu Borgir quite a bit. But what really makes this record soar are the guitar solos, which are gratuitous and masturbatory and fucking awesome.

This Is Lorelei - Holo Boy

On my first couple passes I thought these songs were a significant step down from Box for Buddy, Box for Star, which was my second favorite album of 2024. I still think this comp of re-recordings is the less essential of the two releases, but that still means it's better than most modern indie-rock that I've heard in recent months. Fellow critic Larry Fitzmaurice compared this record to Elephant Six heads choice Beulah, which convinced my Endless Scroll co-host Michael Brooks to listen to Holo Boy and then relay to me that the Beulah comparison is spot on. Which has resulted in me affirming that "Dreams Away" is indeed as good as any of the best pop songs in the Elephant Six oeuvre.

Chasing Down

Lillie West
of
Lala Lala

Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.

Lala Lala is the band of L.A.-based singer-songwriter Lillie West, and it's been a long time since we've heard from her in that form. Her 2024 album was a mostly instrumental ambient synth project that she made during an artist residency in Iceland, so the last time she properly sang on a record was 2021's I Want the Door to Open. I didn't connect with that record the way I did her previous one, 2018's The Lamb, which was one of my favorite indie-rock records of that year, and still stands up today as a great front-to-back listen. Her new record, Heaven 2, is a return to form in that sense.

It's more electronically focused than the hazy indie-rock of The Lamb, but West's knack for great melodies and piercing lyrics are still the cornerstone of her songwriting. One of the singles, "Even Mountains Erode," is an utterly fantastic track that's buttressed by a firm trip-hop groove, epic choral harmonies, and West's alternately talk-sing/murmur-croon vocals delivering its gut-punching message. It's a knockout, and the rest of Heaven 2, out February 27th, is similarly enamoring.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked West about returning to voice-based music, working with Jay Som, evolving her sound, her biggest musical idol, the last album that blew her mind, and more. Read the full interview below.