Chasing Fridays: Guilt, twentythree, Greg Mendez Q&A, more

Whattup! I was out last week vacationing with my family at Keuka Lake in Upstate, NY, so I decided to take a rare absence from the weekly newsletter grind. That doesn't mean I wasn't busy writing. In that time, I reviewed the new Ken Carson and Show Me the Body albums for Pitchfork, and an interview I did with the newsletter How I Make Money Writing was published. In it, I talk about how I manage to live off of my writing and what I've found works/doesn't for a writer like me. It was flattering to be asked to participate in something like that, so give it a read if you're so inclined.

Or don't and save your eyes for this week's Chasing Fridays. I start by checking in on the exploding metalcore revival, then reveal my song of the summer, and then recommend a great pop song that may or not be considered cloud-rock. And then for this week's Chasing Down Q&A I interviewed Greg Mendez, a Philly singer-songwriter who you probably already know, and will probably be interested to read more about. It's a pretty streamlined newsletter by my standards. But hey, sometimes brevity is a-OK.

Guilt - guilt.

It's now clearer than ever that the metalcore revival has reached a new phase. The bands who kickstarted the return of late 90s and early 2000s metalcore within the hardcore underground (Balmora, Adrienne, Since My Beloved, xNomadx, Azshara) have nearly all broken up, and the ones still going (Azshara, specifically) are playing a sub-style of metalcore – colloquially known as "angel statue metalcore," i.e. Prayer For Cleansing-indebted melodeath – that's been eclipsed by a whole new wave of cadet cap nostalgists. This younger cadre of bands – I Promised the World, concealer., Holder, Sherane, xSeraphx, Crowquill, etc. – also come from the DIY hardcore scene, but are rapidly ascending at a scale that hardcore alone, despite being bigger and broader than ever, can no longer contain.

I promise you that however popular you think these newer groups are, you're severely underestimating the size and intensity of their fanbases. This year's chaotic Hellfest lineup is a pretty good bellwether for where things are headed in the next six months, which is not just a niche and nerdy pocket of hardcore honoring a forgotten sound, but a full-blown return to the money-making frenzy that metalcore experienced in the late 2000s and early 2010s. The era when it became fully divorced from its hardcore origins and assimilated into the Warped Tour/Hot Topic industrial complex. The metalcore revival started as a back-to-basics rebuke of that exact cultural/musical devolution, and now it's on the precipice of becoming – for better or worse, and I don't think it's all for worse – what it initially set out to oppose.

Guilt are playing an increasingly prominent role in this fascinating transition period. The Seattle band dropped their debut EP last summer and then re-released it earlier this year via Ephyra Recordings, the most influential label in this whole milieu. Like the other bands in their specific micro-generation, Guilt's sound is an anachronistic mish-mash of mid-2000s metalcore, traditional screamo, 2000s post-hardcore (of the Silverstein variety), and even a little deathcore. On the song "My Marionette," their vocalist employs a talk-rap delivery that's heavily inspired by Glassjaw, and the new songs I saw them play at a Hellfest pre-show in Pittsburgh earlier this month also featured the same vocal style. It's not my preferred side of Guilt, but I can see the appeal.

Guilt were the band I most wanted to see at that show, which was headlined by I Promised the World and also boasted the Y2k-era metalcore veterans Harvest and Nehemiah, the latter of whom was hands down the best group of the night. Guilt were pretty lackluster, to be honest. Their vocalist struggled to replicate his uniquely harsh shrieks that make the guilt. EP so invigorating, and the clean choruses – which I can actually tolerate from this band, believe it or not – didn't land either. The highlight of their set was the breakdown in their strongest song, "Everyone Dies in August," which is so out of the blue and so unexpectedly decimating that it activates my amygdala every time I hear it. As soon as that mosh part started, a bunch of kids flung off the stage and the smooshed-together floor opened into a chasm of cartwheels and spinkicks.

The most surprising element of that show was the crowd. The gig wasn't heavily promoted on social media, but the 250-cap venue was packed to a near sellout, and I hardly recognized any of the young bucks singing and moshing with all of their might. One year earlier to the very week, I saw I Promised the World play to a tiny handful of heads in that same venue, and this time they had hordes of zoomers flocking to the front of the stage to shriek and swing on each other. Guilt are still a pretty small band at this point, but even they had a bunch of maniacs who yanked the mic for "Everyone Dies in August" and clearly knew what the band were playing. These young fans dressed like 2000s metalcore kids and danced like hardcore kids, but I don't know where the hell they came from. That, to me, is the biggest indicator of where this thing is headed. Whoever's hands the metalcore revival rested on in 2024 no longer have a grip.

twentythree - "6ix God"

The song of the summer can't be chosen or predicted. It presents itself to you when you're already in the throes of a suffocating heatwave, crawling from one side of the city to the other with the windows down and the A/C blasting. I was suffering from those exact conditions when twentythree's "6ix God" was crowned my song of the summer. I first heard the Toronto rapper when his 2025 single "Queen St." had a viral moment at the top of this year, and then I started seeing the 20-year-old turn up in the "rising underground" carousels of Instagram rap blogs. I thought "Queen St." was a catchy-ass song that also felt kind of cheap and easy, and as twentythree started unloading loosies at a weekly clip – mirroring the prolific output and aloof cadence of his biggest contemporary influence, fakemink – I mostly kept a skeptical distance.

But at some point last month my curiosity heightened. twentythree's song "Trust Nobody" was also having a moment, and with a co-sign from D.C.'s Jaeychino – who dropped one of the year's best albums – under his belt, I let myself give in to twentythree's bleary, blown-out appeal. I think his newly-released debut album, 6ix Pop, is pretty good, but it's "6ix God," an underrated song he dropped back in February, that I can't shake off my queue every time I get behind the wheel or need to reset my ears with something blunt and booming. twentythree's slurred vocals are mostly illegible chirps that slip and slide across the beat like vodka-sloshed shoe soles on a slick wood floor. There's very little build or direction to "6ix God," a thumping strip club soundtrack that ends right where it began. Oppressively sweltering just like a summer smog that never lifts.

Mackeeper - "Flat Soda"

I gotta give it up to John's Music Blog (essential reading) for putting me onto Mackeeper, another Toronto artist who evidently had a song featured in The Drama soundtrack that I don't recall hearing during the actual film. I definitely would've remembered "Flat Soda," though. His latest single is a diabolically catchy indietronica banger that I suppose could be considered cloud-rock for its similarities to Horse Vision and auto-tune-zone Alex G, but is in truth too outwardly poppy and energetic for that sub-genre. The synths on this song are super cartoonish and campy without ever sounding hokey, and Mackeeper delivers his strained vocals with a desperate hunger that's not often heard in the world of artists he's emerging from. "Flat Soda" is also a song of the summer contender.

Chasing Down

Greg Mendez
a
singer-songwriter

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

Greg Mendez is a singer-songwriter from Philly who you certainly know by know if you read Chasing Sundays or any other modern indie-rock publication. I was a casual listener of his in the late 2010s and then fell off at the beginning of this decade, which led me to low-rate his 2023 breakthrough, Greg Mendez. I've since atoned for that misstep, and his 2026 album Beauty Land ranks among my faves of the year thus far. What really wows me about Mendez's songs is the emotional potency he's able to convey with such spartan arrangements. His melodies are so strong that all he needs to do is murmur them in order to stick, and his lyrics are a world unto themselves that's hard not to get lost in.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Mendez about Beauty Land, the songwriter who most inspires him lyrically, the Elliott Smith comparisons, the most underrated band in Philly, and more. Read the full interview below – and the 60-plus others in the archive, with a new one added each week.