Chasing Fridays: Feeble Little Horse, crushed, Balmora Q&A, more
Three album reviews, my take on Pittsburgh indie's biggest night, and a trend-watching Q&A.
I feel like I haven't seen a show in forever. It's been six days. I'm seeing one tonight (a free hardcore show at Preserving Underground featuring Full Blown Chaos and Holder) and then three or four next week, but this week was relatively chill. I listened to that new klein album a bunch (linked below), wrote about shoegaze, and tinkered with my newsletter, the fruits of which you can feast upon below. It's a real smorgasbord of an issue. Three reviews (trip-hop, death metal, hardcore), an in-depth live report about Pittsburgh's most exciting indie bands, and a Q&A with Senti of Balmora and Ephyra Recordings. Get at it.
crushed - no scope
There's a part in "celadon," the final song on crushed's debut album no scope, that's simply amazing. Singer Bre Morell's falsetto croons are dancing weightlessly in a dank cavern where it sounds like hanging stalactites muffle the guitar strums and muddy the drums, protecting Morell's voice – vulnerable and sweet – from the instrumentation's predatory rumble. But not for long. The drums eerily creep back into focus, sneaking beneath Morell's wails and then suddenly lunging upwards to attack. This time, the breakbeat we've been trailing throughout no scope is louder, closer, more vivid than it's ever sounded. It's like the scene in a horror movie when the light finally shines on the shadowy villain's ghastly figure. At last, you're witnessing what you paid to see.
Eli Enis
When crushed are at their best, the L.A. duo's taut trip-hop songs are as cinematic and transportive as the climax of "celadon." On no scope, Morell and her bandmate Shaun Durkan achieve those highs roughly half of the time. crushed's 2023 EP, extra life, was one of the most loudly praised contributions to the retro trip-hop revival that's been simmering for a few years now, but has yet to fully boil over. That's partially because there isn't a unified scene of notable trip-hop artists laying claim to the mid-90s sound, and also because there isn't one band who's gotten big enough to blow up trip-hop's contemporary spot. I was hopeful that crushed could be that band after hearing no scope's tantalizing lead single, "starburn," but now that I've spent time with the rest of the album, I'm not so sure.
crushed approach trip-hop with a clinical precision, and that's both a strength and a weakness of theirs. "starburn" is great precisely because it's labored over. Everything about the arrangement – the piano vamp, the clattering beat, the way Morell's voice is layered almost like a Lorde song, the subtle textural flare of Durkan's harmonies – is fastidiously coiffed into a scientifically accurate trip-pop song. In other instances, crushed's attention to detail erases their human character. Writing-wise, "cwtch" and "meghan" are safe and sterile, and sonically, the production on those cuts is too clear and exacting. Durkan's voice works well as a backup to Morell's, but his nasally timbre lacks the ethereal flutter of his bandmate's delivery, which further hampers the dry, inactive soundscapes on those Durkan-led tracks.
When crushed relax their attentive posture and let themselves feel what they're playing, their music is so much more invigorating. On "oneshot" and "licorice," my favorite tracks, Morell unearths a soulful wail that she inexplicably keeps hidden for the majority of no scope. Whenever she lets herself sing like that, crushed's own excitement in the studio becomes audibly apparent in the music. The breakbeats get louder, the basslines become springier, and the whole mix comes alive. You can tell they're stoked on how they sound, and that confidence is infectious. There's no denying that crushed have the trip-hop sauce. It's just a shame that much of no scope is burdened by tightly-wound production and analytical writing choices that water down their signature flavor.
Ephemeral - Envisaged Human Collapse
One of my main beats at Chasing Sundays is covering which hardcore-adjacent bands the hardcore kids are fucking with right now. This week, it's the new Ephemeral LP, Envisaged Human Collapse. I liked the Florida death metal band's 2023 EP, Tower of Silence, quite a bit, but their debut album is a helluva lot darker, meaner, and sonically destructive. It's basically Bolt Thrower via All Out War, except closer to BT than AOW.
I think this record is an interesting bridge between the muddy brutal death metal trickling into hardcore (Final Resting Place, Discontent) this year and the "death metal made by hardcore kids" shit (200 Stab Wounds, Sanguisugabogg) that probably peaked within hardcore back in early '24. I don't know if true-blue death metal heads will care about this since the riffs aren't anything all that special. But I think it's a fittingly apocalyptic soundtrack for what appears to be the actual collapse of American Democracy.
MASK - Aggressive Contempt
Hardcore fans are also fucking with this new MASK album. I'm with 'em. This band remind me of the Idaho band Ingrown, who play a fast, punky, yet still very much metallic breed of heavy hardcore that hovers just a hair left of the dial from mosh music's median in the 2020s. I think Ingrown are a fantastic live band who I never feel compelled to listen to on recording. Something about MASK's similar sounding fight music rubs me the right way.
The dance parts are viciously hard and the fast parts don't just sound like obligatory fodder to break up the breakdowns. It's just a tiny bit weirder and looser than this style usually is, but MASK are able to fiddle with gnarled vocal effects and thrashy tempos without losing the mosh-forward plot. I also think it's cool that Aggressive Contempt is the heaviest album that Convulse Records (Militarie Gun, GEL, MSPAINT) have ever released. Not sure how much I'll return, but I'm with it this week.
Feeble Little Horse, Kassie Krut, forty winks live @ Mr Smalls Theatre
This was Music's Biggest Night for Pittsburgh indie-rock fans. Feeble Little Horse hadn't played a proper show in Pittsburgh since their album release gig in 2023. They did play a secret house show over the summer that was a lot of fun in a disorganized, sweaty way. But this sold-out show at the 800-cap Mr. Smalls Theatre – by far the biggest crowd they've ever played to in their hometown – was even more fun in a well-organized, sweaty way. It was particularly special because FLH's Pittsburgh proteges, forty winks, were opening the gig, so the event doubled as a ceremony for forty winks becoming made members of the Oakland indie-rock mafia. It was a strange coronation.
For the uninitiated, forty winks are a raw, shreddy shoegaze band whose 2025 debut EP, Love Is a Dog From Hell, earned a rave 7.8 Pitchfork review and a considerable buzz in and outside of Pittsburgh. Besides Merce Lemon, they're easily the most hyped band out of this city since FLH, who their recorded output thus far quite strongly resembles. I think forty winks are an extremely fun and exciting band, but when I saw them play a packed house show over the spring, I left thinking that they still had a long ways to go as a live act. I feel the same way after this set opening for FLH, which was both entertaining and baffling to witness.
The old converted church was already packed tight when forty winks nervously stepped out in front of 8x the people they'd ever previously played to. They started the set by jerkily strumming some chords that were discordant and random. It sounded like it was building to a song but also kind of sounded like a soundcheck. I'm still not sure what it was. I was more occupied with the fact that forty winks were missing their singer-bassist Cilia Catello, who sings most of the songs on Love Is a Dog From Hell. I'm not sure if she was simply absent for this set or if she's out of the band entirely, but her nonattendance was so glaring that a forty winks fan I went to the show with didn't even recognize the band, turning to me after their set to ask "who was that?"
Guitarist/secondary singer Conner McGee took over all of Catello's vocals, and since his voice is considerably different than hers – like Kevin Shields via John K. Samson, my friend and I determined – most of the songs from their EP were nearly unrecognizable. To my ears, the bulk of the set sounded like new material. I enjoyed all of it, especially when McGee shredded like Kerry King, and when the whole band locked into some smoldering gallops that reminded me of Thousand Leaves-era Sonic Youth. After about 12 minutes of playtime (that's roughly three dozen eyelid blinks), forty winks ended the set abruptly. No one in the group had addressed the crowd the whole time, and the ambling slowcore song they finished with was a peculiar and anti-climactic conclusion. McGee glanced up at the audience and waved awkwardly, and the band ducked offstage without saying a peep.
It's jarring how much forty winks remind me of Feeble Little Horse in their early days. When I first interviewed the equestrians, they didn't know what they had. Their music, initially released on Pittsburgh's Crafted Sounds label, had organically blown up before the band had even toured in a meaningful capacity. They were getting major looks in the press and the industry's eyes were all over them, but to me, they didn't really seem to comprehend the external pressures they were about to face in the lead-up to their sophomore record. forty winks, another Crafted Sounds group, popped off in the same indie milieu with even less shows and less music under their belts. They don't have a Saddle Creek deal or anything (yet), but I've heard rumblings that the band are aiming to make serious moves in 2026. I'm intrigued to see where they go.
Feeble Little Horse, on the other hand, aren't so feeble anymore. They sounded and looked like rockstars up there. They honestly sounded fucking amazing. This was far and away the tightest show I've ever seen them play. Singer-bassist Lydia Slocum and guitarist-singer Sebastian Kinsler are totally comfortable onstage now, having come a long way from the "lol how'd we even get here" amateurishness of their early sets. The two frontpeople still do their goofy bit where they recite the same phrase at the same time while looking in each other's eyes, and it's still funny every time they do it. Meanwhile, Kinsler and new guitarist Rob Potesta were shooting each other brotherly smiles from across the stage that revealed how locked-in they are as bandmates. I actually felt like I was watching a fully-formed band perform rather than a bedroom project that's still trying to gain its legs.
What has to be underscored about Feeble Little Horse is that their fans go feral. These aren't glassy-eyed shoegazers standing there lost in space, or wimpy indie muffins gently flopping from side to side. FLH opened with "Freak" and the room erupted into gleeful chaos. When they played "Chores," people jumped on each other's backs and thrashed around in the pit with a punk recklessness. There were as many crowdsurfers at this show as there were when Joyce Manor sold out this very same venue three months earlier. There were multiple walls of death and kids screaming excitedly in between songs and a constant state of non-threatening bedlam that was truly infectious to witness. To anyone writing this band's popularity off as internet hot air with no real-life buy-in: you're wrong.
The band played at least three unreleased songs that all sounded amazing. One had a fast, plunky synth lead that reminded me of Water From Your Eyes' most enervated cuts, and another had a swinging mid-tempo chord progression with a touch of twang. They're learning how to let their songs breath in a way that feels necessary to their evolution. I have high hopes for the new record, whenever that arrives. Until then, I'll be thinking about how FLH smashed their instruments before returning to do the encore, which meant Jake Kelley had to scoop his busted drums off the floor and salvage what he could for "Termites." So don't worry, the impulsive whimsy at the heart of the band is still beating.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
klein - sleep with a cane
fcukers - "I Like It Like That"
Logic1000 - DJ-Kicks: Logic1000
Chasing Down
SENTI
of
Balmora, Ephyra Recordings
Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.
As I've written many times on this website, Balmora are one of my favorite hardcore bands of this decade, and Ephyra Recordings, the DIY label helmed by Balmora frontman Senti, is the most important heavy music label going. Basically every hardcore-related micro-trend that I've been tracing in my coverage has Senti's fingerprints on it. Balmora broke down the door for the old-school metalcore revival that's still lighting up dancefloors worldwide, and Ephyra has facilitated deathcore, post-hardcore, screamo, nu-metal, and third-wave emo slipping back into hardcore's Zoomer-led gestalt. Whatever this guy touches is worth checking out, especially if you want to understand the tenor of hardcore in the 2020s.
For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Senti about style, metalcore, Balmora, and which trends he thinks will capture the zeitgeist in 2026. Read the full interview below.
You tweeted earlier this year that "style matters" in relation to that video of Blade's vocalist dancing during his own set. Who are the three most "stylish" bands in the scene right now? What about their style appeals to you?
Style over everything. Everything is better with sauce. Three bands (besides Balmora) that I think have undeniable levels of style are Empty Shell Casing, Discontent, and Demonstration of Power. All three of those bands check all the boxes from clothes, to mosh style, to making swagged out music.
Whether it's deathcore (Thus Spoke Zarathustra), screamo (bulletsbetweentongues), third-wave emo (I Promised the World), and metalcore (duh), Ephyra has been on the pulse of every hc-adjacent micro-trend throughout the 2020s. In your estimation, what's next? What sounds are coming back/coming to the fore in 2026?
Post-Hardcore and Drive Thru Records-style emo is next. With bands like I Promised The World, Dazey Doom, Evelyn, and Rosasharin being examples of bands on the label doing it right now. If I were to invest in any genre to be next up it would be that.
Also motocross core is gonna have a resurgence coming from the hardcore scene, and bands like Burnside and Soul Blind will lead that charge. The first hardcore-adjacent band to come out sounding like Fuel or Lifehouse will go straight to the top. It just takes one band to flip the entire scale.