Chasing Fridays: Fleshwater, Sword II, End It Q&A, more
Reviews, an interview, and a living room mosh tutorial in photo form.
ICYMI earlier this week, I published my latest 100-song "Shit I Like" playlist in article form. I wrote about 10 standout songs from the unruly mix of new/old/normal/weird, and Chasing Sundays subscribers get access to the full playlist on Spotify and Apple Music. Going forward, all of my 100-song playlists will be for paying supporters only. Along with my weekly Q&A's, sporadic longform interviews, and seasonal listicles, there's a lot of great writing behind the Chasing Sundays paywall, and I urge you to consider subscribing for just $5/month to reap the benefits of my refined taste and discerning opinions.
Eli Enis
This week's Chasing Fridays is also a doozy. I thoroughly excavated one of my most anticipated rock releases of the year, geeked over a new single, signal boosted one of the latest hardcore trends, reviewed a cloud-rock shrug, and offered a training course in metalcore living room moshing. Then, I interviewed End It frontman Akil Godsey about authenticity in hardcore and his band's bombastic new album Wrong Side of Heaven.
Fleshwater - 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky
I hoped Fleshwater's new album would offer some kind of conclusion to this nu-gaze trip we've been on for what feels like forever. Considering they're one of the most popular bands in the busy intersection between shoegaze, hardcore, and alt-metal, I figured their long-awaited sophomore effort, 2000: In Search of Endless Sky, might serve as a creative capstone for this idiom. Either by functioning as a new North star that all of their many hangers-on could aspire to – and, ideally, if the record was as good as the hype promised it might be, ultimately fail to meet. Or by rejiggering the redundant meta of "Detones-via-Title Fight" into something weirder, cooler, catchier – anything to ward off the avalanche of bands like Split Chain.
Instead of answers, 2000: In Search of the Endless Sky left me with many perplexed questions. Questions like: what exactly is the buy-in here? Are Fleshwater an authentic post-hardcore band with aspirations to one day headline Louder Than Life Festival, as the brooding, belting "Last Escape" indicates? Or are they big-brained rock auteurs renovating the banal simplicity of grunge-gaze with a post-rock pretension, as the dulcet sleigh-bell shakes and controlled feedback warbles of "Silverine" – the only song on here with any dynamic friction – seem to suggest? Or is this a Ceremony situation? Where anything Fleshwater do in the realm of alt-rock is inherently Cool and Interesting simply because well-respected hardcore musicians with an eye for snazzy visuals are the ones making it?
I want to like Fleshwater so bad, but at every turn, this album tries its damndest to prevent that from happening. As musicians, Fleshwater's members are much better at playing their instruments than they are at writing songs. Endless Sky is simultaneously overstuffed and underdeveloped. It feels reductive to lob another Deftones comparison their way, but when something sounds as much like an Around the Fur B-side as opener "Drowning Song," the resemblance is unavoidable. "Green Street" is indicative of their other main mode: down-tuned emo noodling and frosty alt-metal blitzes that are engaged in a constant tug-of-war between wanting to sound like Cave In and Hum. Eventually, the fracas evolves into a stormy post-hardcore breakdown that at least sounds impactful while you're listening to it. Yet, like getting hit with a phone book, the battering fails to leave a bruise.
This is a frustrating theme on Endless Sky. There're genuinely hard parts – the middle passage of "Jetpack," for instance – and many medium-soft parts, but zero tension between them. Instead of pushing and pulling, Fleshwater's songs have the jerky momentum of a hot potato fumbling awkwardly between two hands. These songs never settle for long enough to let a riff or lyric luxuriate, so no section ever feels properly heavy nor lightweight. All the ideas are so frantically in motion that the whole album passes by like a shapeless blur. That frenzied approach could've yielded interesting results if Fleshwater were trying to make a convulsive, anti-commercial record, but they weren't. Every line is wailed like it's being sung with a beaten chest, and the beefy, bassy production makes each note feel like it's desperately trying to reach the rafters of a half-empty amphitheater.
The album's various attempts at Bigness expose Fleshwater's most critical flaw: neither of their vocalists can sing. That wasn't as much of an issue on the band's rawer, grainier 2022 debut, We're Not Here to Be Loved, where Anthony DiDio and Marisa Shirar's pitchy cries had a scrappy charm. Under the spotlight of Endless Sky's clearer, brighter mix, their nasally voices falter. It's not just that both singers are technically sub-par, it's that they're seemingly allergic to delivering a single line that demands to be chanted back or hummed along to. This is one of the most suffocatingly tuneless alt-rock albums I've ever heard. Literally where are the choruses? Moreover, the off-key mewling is so front-and-center on songs like "Jerome Town" that every Cool Point decimal Fleshwater earned for liking Bjork are negated. Chic inspirations mean nothing when the end product is this grating.
I spent as much time as I could withstand trying to pick out portions of Endless Sky that I find enjoyable. It wasn't easy. "Raging Storm" has some quickfire drum fills and flanged guitar gales that inject the record with a punk inertia that's otherwise woefully lacking. Meanwhile, the album's best song is undoubtedly its closer, "Endless Sky," where Fleshwater finally stop trying to jam seven different transitions into each four minute track and just let a serviceable Chino impression glide across a steady churn of staticky distortion. The more I sat with that takeaway, the more it incensed me. Beneath all the hype, all the precise aesthetic, all the competent musicianship, the best Fleshwater can come up with on album No. 2 is a bargain-bin nu-gaze song? The Endless Sky might be out there somewhere, but Fleshwater's search turned up negative.
Sword II - "Even If It's Just a Dream"
Sword II's music – kaleidoscopic in sound, revolutionary in subject matter – has been dancing on the fringes of shoegaze since their 2020 EP, Between II Gardens. I struggled to crack open their 2023 debut, Spirit World Tour, which straddled the scuzzy psychedelia of Spirit of the Beehive's early material and the studio-rat fuckery of the Philly maestro's more recent lot. Alas, I never managed to penetrate Sword II's oblique outer shell until "Even If It's Just a Dream."
The first time I heard the Atlanta band's new single, it felt like the earth splitting in two. An ecstatic rupture that crumbled the ground beneath my feet and sent me falling, falling, falling in a slow-motion descent toward a verdant paradise of egalitarian pleasures. Every time I experience this song's masterful crescendo from motorik nod to shreddy dream-pop jam – equal parts Beach House flicker and Deerhunter blaze – I feel a utopian flutter in my gut. A safe stillness in my soul. An unshaking confidence that better times are ahead. Even if it's just a dream.
Discontent - Processing Upheaval
As hardcore's surface tier gets cleaner and glossier, there's a meaningful contingent of the underground that's reveling in the dirtiest, ugliest sounds imaginable. Like Torture and Final Resting Place before them, Discontent are refurbishing 90s brutal death metal with a contemporary hardcore swagger. The geographically nebulous "Northeast" band have at least one Final Resting Place member in their ranks, and their buzzy debut album, Processing Upheaval, was jointly released on the hardcore-focused Streets of Hate label and the fledgling Mass Casualty imprint, who've spent 2025 issuing other hardcore-approved BDM like Asphyxiated's gurgling slug-fest Reborn in Evil (technically under the Mass Casualty sub-division Controlled Terrorism, for some reason) and Encryption's barely audible mini-massacre Gagging In Synaptic Resin.
Musically, Processing Upheaval isn't a tremendously far cry from the uber-metallic mosh fodder that's dominated hardcore throughout the 2020s. It's the choice production quality that distinguishes the music in this niche yet thriving pocket of the scene. When you first throw this record on, your instinctual response is to check your ears to make sure they're not stuffed with cotton balls. Every instrument except the pinging snare is so damp and muffled that the mosh parts glug rather than chug.
Eli Enis
The resolving bass notes flood the entire mix until the whole song quakes like six feet of rainwater sloshing against decaying drywall. Final Resting Place's music has the same musty atmosphere, but Discontent's songwriting is a little looser and nimbler on its feet. It's closer to hardcore than slam or BDM, which is probably why I prefer Processing Upheaval to FRP's material. After enough time drowning in Discontent's mucky abyss, I never want to hear treble in a guitar tone ever again.
Snuggle - Goodbyehouse
Of all the artists drifting through the clouds on Copenhagen's Escho label (Fine, Smerz, Astrid Sonne, Molina, etc.) Snuggle's music has the lowest barrier to entry. The Danish duo's debut album, Goodbyehouse, is feathery and pert. Dream-pop that's light on the somnolent atmosphere and heavy on the love spell catchiness. If American bands like Slow Pulp and Momma speckled their gauzy indie-rock with the Nordic glitchiness that Escho and Co. specialize in, it'd sound something like Goodbyehouse opener "Sun Tan." Whereas Snuggle's labelmates relish in bending and refracting, this band's arrangements are molded into more familiar pop builds. That makes Goodbyehouse a more immediate and also less enduring listening experience.
Songs like "Playthings" and "Woman Lake" possess some of Lana Del Rey's weary sensuality and sun-kissed glow, offering Snuggle a path toward prestige playlisting that isn't afforded to ML Buch, for instance. Fine reincarnated Mazzy Star's Southwestern sway on "Losing Tennessee," and Snuggle commune with the same slowcore spirit on "Water in a Pond" and "Carsick." All of these songs are pretty and sweetly alluring, and that's about it. What makes Snuggle's regional contemporaries revelatory is how they reformat simple pop songs with peculiar chord shapes and unsteady electronic chassis. Snuggle extend a hand that way on occasion – the detuned strums of "Dust" are a refreshingly quirky reprieve – but not often enough to make Goodbyehouse an essential contribution to their world-class scene. Good not great, like don't love.
withpaperwings - Six Thousand Days
With all the incredible throwback metalcore coming out of the hardcore scene these days, impromptu living room mosh sessions are on the rise. While flailing precariously around your coffee table is the ideal way to engage with Six Thousand Days, the clobbering new EP from Orlando metalcore crew withpaperwings, the risk of injury and embarrassment is considerable. Below, Chasing Sundays HQ has provided a three-step tutorial on how to safely and swagfully mosh indoors without clipping your finger on a CD rack, damaging your priceless wall art, or looking like a total pussy.
Step 1: Screamo Hands
Screamo Hands are the body's natural response to a nasty chugged verse overlaid with blood-curdling shrieks. When that part arrives during Six Thousand Days' opening title-track, pull yourself up from your couch, station your body at least three feet from the wall, and throw one or both arms high, bobbing them lightly and keeping your momentum in-sync with the thumping kickdrum. As you can see in figure 1 above, a devilishly satisfied grimace is the key to proper Screamo Hands form. Remember to keep your legs planted still and don't overdo it with the arm movements. The purpose of this move is twofold: 1) To get your adrenaline flowing for the more physical steps that follow 2) To look dope as fuck.
Step 2: Ill-Advised Kick
Screamo Hands are just the warmup. Once the actual breakdowns arrive, that's when the real fun begins. During the savory mosh part halfway through "The Image of You," withpaperwings provide a superb opportunity to perform step 2: an Ill-Advised Kick. Whipping your leg up to your outstretched arm is a classic entry move for an actual hardcore pit, and recreating that action while wearing socks on a slippery hardwood floor is always a sound decision. You might break your most expensive personal possessions while dancing alone in your house to music that's made by and for 19-year-olds. But at least you'll know in your heart that it probably, maybe, looked kind of cool for a second.
Step 3: Straight-Up Swinging In Your Living Room Like a Dipshit
You've thrown up the hands. You've executed a kick. The knuckle-beating breakdowns keep coming, so it's time to complete the cycle with step 3: Straight-Up Swinging In Your Living Room Like a Dipshit. For this exercise, please skip to the 47-mark of "Blinded" – right when those deathcore brees sound off over a gnarsty chug – and consult the positioning in figure 3 above. The idea here is to basically just swing your arms ferociously, and with very little spatial awareness, in your neatly arranged living room. Like a dipshit. It might look sick. It might go horribly awry. But fuckit, just let 'er rip. Metalcore's awesome.
DISCLOSURE: Chasing Sundays is not responsible for any toes broken on table legs or fingernails torn on jagged doorways. However, we will take credit for any and all successful living room mosh sessions that result in awesome, epic, and/or tough asf feats of metalcore dancefloor prowess.
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Big Thief - Double Infinity
Salem - Yes I Smoke Crack and Water
Magic America - Get In the Truck
Chasing Down
AKIL GODSEY
of
End It
Chasing Down is a Q&A series with artists, friends, and others of good taste.
If someone put a gun to my head and asked me my favorite hardcore release of the decade thus far, End It's 2020 seven-inch, One Way Track, would be my quickest response. Their 2022 follow-up, Unpleasant Living, is also a good answer. End It's music has a singular quality that's getting rarer to come by in a genre that's bustling with "FFO" bands. The Baltimore group are steeped in the same classics as all their peers, but with their always-intoxicating (and often intoxicated) frontman Akil Godsey at the helm – a vocalist equally influenced by the Bad Brains and Life of Agony – they're able to reverse-engineer NYHC bounce and D.C. punk urgency into their own creation.
Nearly a decade after they first formed, End It finally released their debut album, Wrong Side of Heaven, last month via Flatspot Records. At roughly the same runtime as all their previous EP's combined, the loaded LP feels like a victory lap for a band whose discography was already near-flawless. All 15 tracks – including the cover of Maximum Penalty's "Could You Love Me?" – celebrate End It's dependable appeals, with standouts like "Exploiter (SYBAU)" and "Anti-Colonial" going right in the "future fan-favorite" bin. Wrong Side of Heaven is hardcore End It's way: not just tough and heavy, but electric and soulful, spry and sticky, morbidly hilarious and just plain morbid.
For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Godsey about some Baltimore OGs, authenticity in hardcore, why Maximum Penalty deserve more love, and the lyrics and sound of Wrong Side of Heaven. Read the full interview below.
"Anti-Colonial" is one of my favorite cuts on the record. Can you talk about your lyrics on that song and what you were trying to get across? Does it speak to a wider motif that you're trying to convey with End It?
First and foremost: free Palestine, free Sudan, free Congo, and free any part of the world that’s being occupied or controlled by an outside force that’s manipulating the people to bolster their power and influence.
That song in particular is my response to the current state of the world. America has always been an actual horrible country and me being Black doesn’t mean that I can’t show empathy towards other people being exploited. I’m fully aware that the people I'm speaking in support of would still call me the n-word and that doesn’t bother me because I’m here to make things better for all of us.
End It was initially all about my suicidal ideation and how much I didn’t want to be alive, but things change, so I guess you could say we’re now saying "End all of the oppression that’s occurring." Absolutely no need for there to be daily atrocities being blasted across the internet. Maybe it’s human nature or maybe I’m naïve, but that don’t bother me. Tired of people being mistreated and have been given the opportunity to say something about it so I will.
Who in your opinion is the most authentic band in hardcore right now? Not even necessarily the best, but the band that feels the realest and most quintessentially HC to you?
End It from Baltimore City, Maryland. After that I would have to say there are a few: Terror, Combust, Haywire.
You guys covered Maximum Penalty on the new record which is a cool and fitting choice. Explain to any young heads reading this why that band are important and why they should get more love than they do in the present day.
Talk about a band with authenticity! Old-school NYHC band. At this point in human history you could say they’re a “band’s band” – you’re either in the club or not. I’m happy we can keep their legacy alive. I can’t articulate exactly why they are a standout. You just have to listen to them. Start with the album Superlife.