Chasing Fridays: concealer, Car Underwater, Betty Hammerschlag Q&A

Sometimes I look at the headlines of my Chasing Fridays roundups and think, "Welp, hopefully this is for...someone." Is there anybody else out there besides me who's equally invested in the minutia of modern metalcore and the progression of outsider internet pop? Considering my subscriber count climbs each week, I suppose there is, and for that I am thankful. Because it would feel inauthentic to narrow my scope of coverage. I'm simply too invested in the progression of hardcore kids reviving metalcore, in shoegazers pivoting to Hot Topic post-hardcore, and in the budding career of Betty Hammerschlag – a cloud-rock mage who I had the honor of interviewing this week for a very special, very exclusive edition of Chasing Down – to pick just one lane. Por que no los todos?

Car Underwater - "The Failure of My Life Will Run on Self Will"

Did you know that zoomer shoegaze icon quannnic now co-fronts a post-hardcore band named after an Armor For Sleep song who are currently signed to Atlantic Records? I can't think of a more "Chasing Sundays type beat" assortment of words than what I just typed, so I hope you're prepared for the kind of dense extrapolation that only I'm qualified to provide. Car Underwater are the band in question, and it's worth breaking down each member's resumes to demonstrate how they fit snugly into the zoomergaze-to-emo pipeline I've been going on about this year.

In addition to quannnic, the group features fellow digi-gaze linchpin Max Epstein, a.k.a. Photographic Memory, who's also played in Wisp and quannnic's live bands; producer and former Momma drummer Zach Capitti Fenton, who now drums in L.A. shoegazers Cryogeyser; Sonny Foster of defunct skramz band Versera; Ghostemane bassist Nolan Nunes, who also played in a different L.A. post-hardcore supergroup, If I Die First; and most interestingly Darcy Baylis, an Australian producer/guitarist who notably collabed with Wicca Phase Springs Eternal, worked a bit on Ninajirachi's I Love My Computer, and also contributed guitars to Sweet Boy's car chaser – the album that brought this whole shoegaze/slowcore/emo crossover trend into focus for me.

Unlike Sweet Boy, Dead Calm (aka Sign Crushes Motorist), and flyingfish, who've all pivoted from making TikTok-viral slowcore/shoegaze to second-wave emo within the last year, Car Underwater are thoroughly mining from emo's aughts-era third wave. Specifically, the kind of VH1-famous post-hardcore that Senses Fail, Scary Kids Scaring Kids, and Hawthorne Heights were making in the mid-2000s, which is a little heavier than My Chemical Romance/Fall Out Boy's theatrical pop-punk, but wimpier and more melody-driven than the surrounding metalcore of the time (Underoath, As I Lay Dying).

As far as I know, this is the first time in history that a bunch of shoegaze artists have jumped from that genre to making unabashed Warped Tour/Myspace/Hot Topic music. That's simply not an artistic trajectory that existed in the 2000s or the 2010s, when the cultures that Armor For Sleep and Autolux belonged to – two bands that quannnic evidently loves – couldn't have been further apart. In the 2020s, shoegaze not only became firmly entwinted with nu-metal and hardcore, but now also various styles of emo, the most surprising being the swoopy-banged version that bands like Funeral For a Friend were making when Fleeting Joys were gliding guitars in a totally separate musical universe. The kind of post-hardcore that Car Underwater – whose members probably like Fleeting Joys, weirdly enough – are now regenerating for a major label audience in 2026.

Unlike quannnic's, and to a lesser degree Photographic Memory's, solo shoegaze projects, which fuse analog gales of distortion with hyper-modern electronic production in truly novel ways, nothing about Car Underwater's music is remotely innovative. Everything about their new song "The Failure of My Life Run On Self Will" – from the gibberish title and dimly lit house party in the music video, to the nasally clean vocals, sporadic backup shrieks, and fanged pop-punk riffage – is a clinical replication of their mid-aughts influences. It's a well-done take on that sound, but it's pure nostalgia bait to feed the ongoing mill of mid-2000s 'core revivalism. All of Car Underwater's choices are too neatly arranged, too exacting, too moodboardy to not feel a little mercenary and cash-grabby, which is a vibe I don't get from any of these member's previous projects.

Six years ago, Car Underwater bassist Nolan Nunes and a few of his first-wave emo-rap buddies (Lil Lotus, Nedarb) tried reviving the same post-hardcore sound with If I Die First, another L.A. band who achieved modest hype in the metalcore underground, but were a half-decade too early to engage the built-in audience who Car Underwater are now playing for. Back then, If I Die First's emo-rap careers were subsidizing their post-hardcore passion project, but in 2026, Car Underwater scans as these musicians' bid at achieving financial security so they can fund their weirder, more contemporary solo affairs. We'll see if this group actually delivers what Atlantic are counting on (becoming the Wisp of post-hardcore, I suppose), and I'll keep an eye out for Saosin shirts the next time I go see TAGABOW.

concealer. - This Room Could Be Heaven.

I didn't plan for there to be any synergy between this section and the previous one about Car Underwater, but I'd be remiss to leave a glaring connection dangling. That band If I Die First were a few years too early for mid-2000s post-hardcore nostalgia in the same way that SeeYouSpaceCowboy – who did a split with If I Die First – were a few years too early for mid-2000s metalcore nostalgia. The Orlando band concealer. are making the exact kind of polished yet punchy metalcore that SYSC were unleashing on their 2019 debut, The Correlation Between Entrance and Exit Wounds, which was a slick metalcore record coming out of the hardcore scene at a time when slick, 2000s-style metalcore didn't have nearly the cache in hardcore that it does now.

concealer. are lucky that there's abundant interest in that sound now, because their newly-released debut, This Room Could Be Heaven., is one of the best high-gloss metalcore records of the decade. Now, to some ears, this will still sound like a relatively mid-fidelity album compared to the blockbuster sheen that coats metalcore's upper ranks (Sleep Token, Bad Omens, Bring Me the Horizon). However, concealer. sit at the threshold for how clean and tight a metalcore band can be without sounding overly manicured and feeling commercially desperate. Although concealer. are signed to Ephyra Records, the DIY label that's most responsible for reigniting lowercase-"m" metalcore in the 2020s, they don't sound like the label's flagship bands – Balmora, Azshara, xNomadx, Since My Beloved – who all specialize in a rawer, more primitive form of metalcore.

This Room Could Be Heaven is a lot closer to bands like Static Dress, Foreign Hands, and especially I Promised the World – modern metalcore groups who are mining influence from mid-2000s metalcore instead of early 2000s metalcore. This is a pedantic yet meaningful evolution in the way the genre is being reinterpreted under the cultural umbrella of hardcore. Instead of recalling early Poison the Well or Prayer for Cleansing, the punishing second song on concealer.'s album, "Claymore," sounds like Every Time I Die by way of On Broken Wings. The riffs are angular yet polished, the production crisp yet chunky, and the breakdowns are tautly mechanized in the way metalcore breakdowns became by the end of the aughts. The era when metalcore exited the auspices of hardcore and developed into a sound, scene, and genre all unto itself.

The mosh parts in "Color Slowly Fading" don't have the live looseness – the organicness of a band in a room – that's characteristic of Y2k metalcore, the permutation that Balmora and Azshara are calling back to. The breakdowns in concealer.'s songs are unnaturally rigid. Each instrument is aligned into perfect rhythmic sync so that the whole band bludgeons in lockstep with an industrial militancy. The kind of breakdowns you'd hear in a Devil Wears Prada or Of Mice and Men song, except concealer. are hardcore kids, so their music feels a lot more serious and provocative than what was churned out on Warped Tour Monster Energy stages during the Obama years.

From a music nerd perspective, the most compelling thing about concealer. is how they delicately thread the needle between Good and Lame styles of metalcore in a way that feels very distinct to this moment in the 2020s. From a music listener perspective, the coolest thing about concealer. is how great their songs are – and better yet, how great this record is as a full-length statement. This is one of the rare instances where cryptic electronic interstitials and arty, noisy interludes actually serve the flow of a metalcore album, and don't just feel like pretentious add-ons. Moreover, the choruses and clean sections on This Room Could Be Heaven. have a moody alt-metal vibe (a little Deftonesy, a little Tool) that deviates from the limp, nasally pop-punk choruses that metalcore bands usually litter their songs with.

Best of all, none of concealer.'s overtures toward of a slicker, more "mature" sound detract from the intensity of their songs. The amateurish croons on I Promise the World's buzzy new EP are tedious commitments to the Underoath doctrine that's yielded 20 years of bad choruses sandwiched in between awesome breakdowns. concealer.'s melodies are both stronger and more tactfully employed, and songs like "A Quiet Ending" and "This Room Could Be Heaven." are so fucking pulverizing that it's easy to forget the few moments in the album's back-half when the cleans become a tad imposing. Of all the bands filling out the metalcore revival's second rush of talent (Killing Me Softly, Holder, Sherane, xSeraphx, I Promised the World) concealer. have set the bar to beat with This Room Could Be Heaven.

Chasing Down

Betty Hammerschlag
of
Betty Hammerschlag

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

Betty Hammerschlag is quickly becoming one of my favorite artists in the world. And I say "world" for several reasons. 1) She refuses to reveal where she lives, so there's no country to pin her to. 2) Her music drifts fluidly between genre and form in a way that feels post-geographical both physically and sonically. 3) No one on earth is making music quite like her. After dropping two alluring "cloud-folk" albums in the final months of 2025, she's been busy drizzling loosies onto Nina and Soundcloud throughout 2026 that return to where Hammesrschlag's project began: not guitar-based songwriting, but deconstructed club with an oneiric ambiance.

Her brilliance in that mode is best showcased on TYPE SHIT, a 26-song comp of unmastered "loops, collages, and edits" that Hammerschlag dropped on April 1st. On each numerically titled cut, Hammerschlag builds a warped loop using sampled shards of a pop, rock, or rap song, and then patiently spins them into a spiderweb-like tapestry of atmospheric pop: weightless, translucent, deceptively sticky. I've been rinsing TYPE SHIT nonstop since the week it dropped, and on each go-around my ears uncover another magnificent detail or become attached to a different enchanting hook. Like all great artists I take to, I wanted to know more about Hammerschlag, but could barely find any info about her anywhere online.

Which brings me to this week's Chasing Down Q&A. Below is the first and, according to her, only interview Hammerschlag has ever agreed to. I asked her about her life, her background, her process, her taste, her artistic ideology – and her sage-like responses left me with more questions than answers. Even so, I learned a good bit about Hammerschlag's relationship to music, to nature, and to the internet, and Chasing Sundays subscribers can read the exclusive interview below.