Chasing Fridays: I Promised the World, Voyeur, Taraneh Q&A, more

Before I get into my own music writing, I'd like to mention that Stereogum, my favorite music website to read and write for, relaunched their website this week. It has a snazzy new design (with dark mode!) and a new membership program that's super easy to sign up for and offers tons of great paywalled writing for paid subscribers. Stereogum are one of the only major music publications left with a truly independent spirit, and they've commissioned me to write most of my best-known work over the years, which I'm immensely grateful for. I highly recommend that anyone who subscribes to Chasing Sundays should also consider subscribing to Stereogum. Real, trustworthy, non-corporate music journalism cannot exist without the support of its readers. Help ensure that this field isn't entirely reduced to whatever SPIN has become.

With that said, I'm also keeping the deal real over here at Chasing Sundays. For this week's Chasing Fridays roundup, I went in on the new I Promised the World song that all my friends were messaging me about last week, and thought about the implications of a DIY metalcore band signing to Rise Records in 2025. I also reviewed a new album, an EP, and a couple singles (no cloud-rock this week, sorry and/or you're welcome), and then interviewed the NYC artist Taraneh about her fascinating life and career. I know times are tough for everyone right now, but I really appreciate – and need – all the paid subscribers I can get, so if you have the means to throw me $5/month, I promise to make it worth your while.

I Promised the World - "Bliss in 7 Languages"

Welp, it's happening. I Promised the World (fka Sinema), the Texas metalcore band who I saw play to 30-some kids earlier this summer, and then awkwardly open for Deafheaven earlier this fall, have signed to Rise Records. The scene-core empire that made its bones launching turn-of-the-aughts metalcore bands like Attack Attack!, Of Mice & Men, Miss May I, and The Devil Wears Prada, and have since made more bones releasing albums by Dance Gavin Dance, Spiritbox, and Kublai Khan. I Promised the World are part of the Gen-Z metalcore revival that's been proliferating throughout the hardcore scene since early 2023, which has thus far operated in isolation from the broader (more mainstream) metalcore industry, while simultaneously mining artistic influence from what that wing of metalcore sounded like 20 years ago.

But what happens when a metalcore band subverting the genre's present-day sound by intentionally shaping themselves into a Rise band from 2005 actually sign to Rise Records? Is that still back-to-basics authenticity with a chic nostalgic wink? Or is that just a small-"m" metalcore band signing to a capital-"M" Metalcore label and thus becoming a regular 'ole capital-"M" Metalcore band? Are capital-"M" Metalcore bands cool? To me, not usually. In fact, one of the main reasons I've been so enamored by the small-"m" metalcore revival (Balmora, Azshara, Holder) is that it's been expressly antagonistic toward the Sleep Token tier of Aftershock Festival Metalcore.

Most of the bands that started this wave (Adrienne, Since My Beloved, xNomadx) broke up as soon as their buzz began to exceed the heads, and the standing pioneers of the movement, Balmora, have thus far done the opposite of what most metalcore bands do when they get big – becoming darker, heavier, and prioritizing violent dancing above all else. I'm not saying I Promised the World are "selling out" by signing to Rise Records. Nor am I particularly bothered by their decision to do so. Their commercial potential was clear to me as soon as I saw how much they were popping in the underground, and signing to Rise – or Sharptone, or Pure Noise, or Fearless – is the next logical step for a band who're trying to make a modest living by playing that kind of music.

However, I do think their exit from the metalcore minors, just weeks after their Texas scene-mates Empty Shell Casing signed to the Atlantic Records subsidiary Deep Love, suggests a shift is imminent. The bigwigs are taking note of what's thus far been an organic DIY movement, and there's ample history to demonstrate what typically happens in that scenario. For now, I Promised the World are merely doing what they've always done in front of more eyes. The YouTube comments for "Bliss in 7 Languages," their Rise debut, is just a wall of new fans geeking out at how much the band sound exactly like 2005 – Hopesfall, From Autumn to Ashes, Misery Signals, etc. The excitement seems genuine, and there's clearly a giant appetite for young bands reanimating this dusty sound.

I think "Bliss in 7 Languages" is their best song. The sleek, chunky production gives their sound more impact and clarity without scrubbing away its vintage imperfections. There's a clean chorus that actually suits the track's direction (rarer than you think) and the breakdowns utterly smoke. Still, this isn't my preferred flavor of metalcore. I'm more partial to early 2000s metalcore (heavier, closer to hardcore) and late 2000s metalcore (zanier, fully detached from hardcore). The mid-2000s stuff, when melody was creeping in but crabcore absurdity was still a few years off, doesn't hit me the way its bookend iterations do. For many, I Promised the World are the sweet spot. For me, the racoon-haired screamo-core I've been fixated on all year is where my heart lies.

Voyeur - The Burden of Desire

Voyeur are a noise-rock band from New York City who I became aware of through Isaac Eiger, the band's bassist who used to front the group Strange Ranger. Voyeur's other three bandmates are also talented (members of Porches, Sitcom, and an accomplished dance studio owner), but I was particularly intrigued to hear what Eiger was getting up to post-Strange Ranger, given that SR's 2023 finale, Pure Music, was pretty ahead of its time (and pretty misunderstood at the time, by me in particular). Pure Music was basically a cloud-rock record, and Eiger's solo project Threshold lives in a similar world. Voyeur are not a cloud-rock band. Far from it. The Burden of Desire, Voyeur's debut LP, finds Eiger and Co. tapping into the spirit of post-no wave NYC.

Yes, it sounds incredibly similar to Sonic Youth, and clearly they're aware of that influence, given that they hired SY producer Martin Bisi to lend his cavernous BC Studio atmosphere to these creeping, curdling noise-rock burners. Normally, a band cutting it this close to the source material would turn me off, but I actually appreciate that Voyeur unabashedly lean into what made SY such an exciting band in the 80s. The Burden of Desire is harsh but not unforgiving. There're amazing grooves and strangling riffs, and also a lot of slow, smoldering sections where Voyeur let something powerful uncurl from their mouths and instruments without forcing it. It's the perfect balance of intuition and cleverness, reservation and pleasure, thorns and thrills. I'm sold.

Smerz - "Big city life (They Are Gutting a Body of Water EDIT)"

I didn't like the Smerz record from earlier this year as much as I hoped I would, though "Feisty" remains one of 2025's best songs. However, there're a few tracks on the new Big city life EDITS remix album that I absolutely adore. One is TAGABOW's version of "Big city life," where the Philly shoegaze visionaries reformat Smerz's uneasy trip-hop with their home city's six-string clang. In the original version, Smerz's singers, Henriette Motzfeldt and Catharina Stoltenberg, sing like they're whispering private business into an earbud microphone while strutting through downtown in a knee-length coat. TAGABOW pitch up and scramble their chicly monotone voices, gutting the suave instrumental for parts and then redecorating with their own shabby, cig-scented swag. Smerz's angular piano vamp is swapped out for a squiggly synth that mews like a hungry kitten, and TAGABOW's drums patter with the staccato splat of raindrops hitting a windshield. I've listened to this song like 20 times this week.

MX Lonely - "Big Hips"

There's a certain sound coming out of New York City right now. Angsty, gloomy, jagged, even a little sludgy. Grunge-gaze bands like shower curtain, Glaring Orchid, and High. (New Jersey, but close enough) are part of the mix, but I'm thinking specifically of groups like Taraneh, Comet, Suzy Clue, and MX Lonely. Bands that are fond of fuzzy guitar floods, but with vocalists who are more disaffected, raw, emotional, ferocious than shoegaze murmuring allows for. MX Lonely, now signed to Julia's War, are at the forefront of this moody mutation on grunge-gaze, and their new single "Big Hips" is one for the bedroom thrashers. The kind of song that makes you want to tear apart your pillow and watch the feathers float down from the ceiling while your heavy breathing blows them back up. I think some of the music in this milieu is a little cheesy, a little try-hard. Not MX Lonely.

Sorry - "Echoes"

Sorry are one of those weird bands where I know I like them but I can never remember what they sound like. I own their 2020 album, 925, on CD for some reason, and I remember playing it on my stereo and liking what I heard. However, I don't think I even listened to their 2022 record because I handwaved it away as more Windmill scene type shit, which I'm generally unmoved by. I don't know what caused me to give their new record, COSPLAY, a go, but I've been really enjoying it. The first song, "Echoes," is riddled with tension that excites me every time I hear it. The way Asha Lorenz retracts her voice to a clenched-teeth whisper when she sings "fuck" makes the exchange she's narrating so vivid, so potently emotional. The instrumentation, taut rhythms and flowy synths, kind of reminds me of Split-era Lush, but with a modern urgency. This is easily one of the best indie-rock songs I've heard this year.

Dead Daisy - What Are You Waiting On?

I'm always looking for shoegaze with digitized vocals, hyperactive production, and unpredictable songwriting choices. Dead Daisy's new EP What Are You Waiting On? checks those boxes for me. I like how her vocals slip in and out of an emo-rap cadence, and sometimes she just stops singing altogether and talk-whines a line with a muted sasscore yawp. Opener "Bones" is a disorienting, jostling song that I wasn't totally sold on until the epic judders of its final 45 seconds. "Downtime" sounds a bit like a Weeknd cut produced by Salem – weary and warm, but in a way that's more narcotic than natural. Dead Daisy's 2024 single "Who to Call" is a bit more overtly witch-house, but I like how these songs are more adventurous in their collision of internet freak shit and shoegaze.

Chasing Down

TARANEH AZAR
of
Taraneh

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

I wrote about Taraneh's new album, Unobsession, last month and then saw her play live that same week. I was impressed by how loud her band sounded the first time I caught her, and they were equally forceful this time around. Gnashing distortion, clobbering rhythms, and Taraneh at the center of it all, hissing and growling and crooning the words to her creepy, transfixing, sledgehammering rock songs. The Unobsession track "Spinning Out" is the last grunge-gaze cut I ever need to hear. It's like the Pixies fronted by Chelsea Wolfe, and it fucking rules. Taraneh is a really fascinating figure to me. A former investigative journalist who gave up the trade to focus on her doomy dream-pop project that's since evolved into a gothic sludge-rock band. Her Instagram is a wild follow, and she seems to be carving her own space between NYC's outré-pop elite and its indie-rock underbelly.

For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Taraneh about mimicking extremism, post-Tumblr internet culture, the concept of obsession, Title Fight, and more. Read the full interview below.

The sound of your music has changed so much over the last couple years. What precipitated your transformation from eerie dream-pop to the sludgy, industrialized rock of your last two records? 

The sound of my music has definitely changed since I started releasing five years ago and I would say that shift has been happening organically from the start. The first two albums I released were before I ever played a live set — they were songs I wrote in my bedroom as a teenager, most of which I had written long before they were ever recorded and released. And I think you can hear that in the songs, and that naïve softness and grit is something I still love about them when I listen back (which I do about once a year just to remind myself of where I came from).

 New Age Prayer was the first album I wrote after I started performing live, mostly on shared bills with close friends, and that's where the industrial rock sound started really creeping in. I was ready to make songs with a bit more energy, that were a bit more conducive to the bills I was playing, and James Duncan, who co-produced with me, really made that possible, programming drums and synth throughout the record. With N.A.P though, there were still whispers of the old sound that I came from in there, especially on the second half of the album. 

Unobsession, which I released about a month ago, is the first album written and recorded with my band and I would say, at least for me, it's the first drastically different sound in my catalogue and the most indicative of where things are going from here. We played our first U.S. tour as a band last year and immediately locked in just from adapting my old songs for the live shows. When we came back to the studio everything started flowing naturally from that, so the sound wasn't contrived but rather summoned in this special way which I think you can hear throughout the record.

I'm so fascinated by the vast range of artists you've played with in recent years. You're making this dark, heavy, raw music but kind of existing (from my vantage point, at least) in this chic underground pop world that allows you to play shows with Uffie and Evanora Unlimited. Where do you want Taraneh to live in terms of genre and scene? Do you want to be part of the broader hard-rock zeitgeist or continue slithering between worlds as you are now? 

I think genre is very much alive, but culturally in a lot of ways I think we’re post-genre. I’m sure we all have our own critiques of the current cultural moment — a lot of taste and communication and what we give attention to is, for lack of a better word, clipped at the present moment. But on the flipside I think culture is now more expansive than ever before. I think people are far more interested in energy and community than any particular genre or sound — it’s about the feeling. Some might point to that as an indicator of some sort of cultural collapse which I wouldn’t argue with, but in collapse there is regeneration and creation and I think seeing more mixed genre bills and seeing more “scenes” shift away from sonic homogeneity is the liberating flip side of that collapse.

I think part of this cultural moment is that we don't have to choose where we fit in a traditional sense, as utopian as that feels to say. But when we move for the sake of the work and in pursuit of creating something exciting and fresh – dare I say revolutionary – rather than for the optics or to adhere to some sort of classification, I think that's where the magic happens. And it's always cool to see a stacked bill of people doing just that.