Chasing Fridays: Slayr, Sin Against Sin, Trauma Ray Q&A, more

For music fans, the first couple weeks of January are a fun little window where no major releases are clogging the pipeline, and everything that drops has that new car smell just by virtue of it having the new year on its release date, even the stuff that will inevitably be forgotten by the time the snow finally thaws. I've been having fun clicking through whatever comes across my feed without the burden of feeling like I'm avoiding seven marquee releases that just dropped the day prior, and I've found some cool – and some very uncool – stuff through that practice. This week's Chasing Fridays is mostly dedicated to those smaller releases, since nothing major has really piqued my interest yet his year.

100-song playlist: Big Thief, Jane Remover, dexter in the newsagent, more

Plus: torqued shoegaze, icy electro-pop, slugging hardcore, swagged-out rap, frigid slowcore, etc.

Chasing SundaysEli Enis

I wrote about the next rage-star, a couple fantastic hardcore demos, a weird electro-rap album, a great shoegaze EP, a sprightly new Ratboys single, and an emo-rap mixtape that I did not like one bit. Lastly, I interviewed shoegaze sluggers Trauma Ray about their newly-announced EP, their growing profile, the Texas scene they come out of, and more. And in case you missed it, I published my latest 100-song playlist earlier this week, which comes packed with 10 nuggets of blurb-sized music criticism. The actual playlist (and half the write-up) are for paid Chasing Sundays subscribers only, so consider upgrading to $5/month to improve your music taste and bolster your knowledge.

Slayr - Half Blood

Is Slayr the Cameron Winter of rage-rap? That's the most annoying way I could frame the ongoing fervor around Half Blood, a mixtape the Philly rapper dropped in November of last year – right when most music authorities were closing their books for list season – that's just now beginning to puncture the collective consciousness, thus mirroring the trajectory of the Geese frontman's star-making December solo album that languished in year-end purgatory until the first couple weeks of 2025. And much like Heavy Metal, Half Blood is fucking amazing. A project that reanimates a style of music that felt like it was hitting a wall by the second half of 2025, and plays like a winning audition for Slayr to become one of rap's most exciting new voices.

Playboi Carti is essentially the god emperor of rage, and the sub-genre's twin 2025 breakouts, Che and OsamaSon, have crafted their sound in Carti's image: extreme volume (both in terms of loudness and in the amount of content delivered), maximum stimulation, total sensory obliteration. I'd situate Slayr in an adjacent lane of rage innovators alongside Lucy Bedroque (and perhaps also prettifun) whose approach is less face-meltingly caustic, less hyper-masculine, and a lot more melody-focused. In addition to Carti, all ragers obligatorily namecheck Lil Uzi Vert, the genre's sibling pioneer, as an influence, but Slayr actually embeds Uzi's candied melodies into his bedazzled form of rage.

Half Blood opener "Love Blur" mines from the nimble hooks and slippery flows of Luv Is Rage 2, recalling a Soundcloud-era accessibility that sounds refreshingly simple after years of increasingly fried tweaks to the rage formula. That's not to say Slayr is merely taking rage back to its roots. "Demigod" explodes with quasar synths and speaker-wrecking bass that will surely stir the pit at Rolling Loud later this year. Ditto "Wipe Yo Nose," a geeked-up banger where Slayr does actually channel Carti's apoplectic sputters over a beat that hits hard enough to wipe out the dinosaurs. And then there's "Never Going Down," a song that sent a rush of endorphins to my brain that I only feel when I'm first hearing something revelatory. Slayr raps his fucking ass off, suavely and breathlessly, over the type of squelching beat that most ragers would typically tackle at half the speed. Slayr is sprinting on this track, and it's so goddamn exciting to hear him do it.

However, what makes Half Blood most different than other rage records is that it's not only high-voltage shockwaves from front to back. Slayr is a capable singer, and he outright croons on the penultimate cut "The Sky," a song that reminds me more of skaiwater than any of the Opium guys, and does a lot to bolster the dynamic range of a record like Half Blood. Songs like "The Sky" and "Holding" assure that Half Blood never succumbs to the redundancy and burnout that basically every other rage record suffers from. The deluxe version (which might be out by the time you're reading this) will surely change this, but Half Blood is only 12 songs and clocks in at under 30 minutes, which is so incredibly rejuvenating in a sub-genre where overbearing data dumps (Ken Carson's hour-long More Chaos, Yeat's hour-long Lyfestyle) are treated as the standard format.

In 2020, Carti rapped, "I'm a rockstar, I could've joined Slayer." In 2026, there's a new rapstar – and his name is Slayr.

Ratboys - "The World, So Madly"

Last week, a friend and I were commiserating over our mutual exhaustion with the alt-country scourge that's been driving indie-rock for what feels like an eon now. We realized that it's literally been a full decade since bands like Ratboys and Pinegrove began adding a strand of straw to their indie-emo caps, sending a twangy reverberation throughout the guitar band zeitgeist that hasn't settled since. Somehow, there are still new bands being built on the painfully un-novel premise of "we're making docile indie-rock, but it's inspired by the country songs we grew up with, which thereby affords our boring bullshit a whiff of middle-American authenticity that's become the currency of hipsterdom in the 2020s, much like synths were in the 2000s :)"

It's a truly suffocating paradigm, but Ratboys have always been above it all. Crucially, alt-country is only one component of the Chicago band's sound, as they employ tasteful twinges of emo melancholy, pop-punk pep, and indie-rock sheen (see "What's Right?" above) to offset the drowsy effects of alt-country's anemic musicality. Ratboys' latest single, "The World, So Madly," is a masterclass in the style of world-weary indie-rock they've made their own. Julia Steiner delivers the hook with a dewy sweetness, but the band are playing with a restrained intensity that flashes to the forefront during the crunchy solo, though without interfering with the track's feathery pulse and early-morning glow.

If the protracted relevance of alt-country finally boosts Ratboys to the level of popularity they've long deserved, then I suppose it's worth enduring another six months of corn-fed indie-rock that captures the unbeatable thrill of laying out a freshly-washed tablecloth. Yes, Ratboys are that deserving.

Sin Against Sin - Demo 2

Last year, I wrote that Sin Against Sin's inaugural demo instantly made them "your favorite mosher's favorite mosh band." That's remained true over the last year, as the Northeast supergroup – featuring members of Fatal Realm, Cross of Disbelief, Adrienne, Opposition, and others – have fulfilled their destiny to wreck every dancefloor their music soundtracks. Now, coming hot off an FYA set that looked absolutely filthy, Sin Against Sin have returned with their second demo, and it all but ensures that the beatings will continue. The dual-vocalist band had their death-metallized beatdown sound honed in from the jump, and here, they deliver more of what the people want – mosh parts like the knee-scraping one in "Vomitous Strength" – while also stretching their legs in some interesting ways.

They're playing higher up on the fretboard on the first couple tracks, and the song "Beheading" even has a major key riff in the middle that has the effect of a shiny sword reflecting a ray of sunlight through a dark cave. This is warfare music, but the highly stylized art and dank production give the songs an air of gravitas that many bands in this milieu struggle to achieve. "Vomitous Strength" is probably their best song to this point, specifically for the demonic gusts of wind that howl in the background during that body-dragging breakdown, effectively adding a dash of black-metal atmosphere to the tape's premier combat sequence. Little details like that are why I returned to last year's demo so frequently, and while I still currently prefer their first four tracks, this second helping is a worthy successor.

Swords2 - The Long Sleep

Please don't confuse Swords2, the Charlotte, North Carolina emo rapper, with Sword II, the adventurous Atlanta indie band. These two contemporary acts are nothing alike. While Sword II released one of the best albums of 2025, Swords2's new mixtape The Long Sleep is a selection of godawful, amateurish emo-rap with chintzy production and some of the weakest, whiniest vocals I've heard from a modern MC. The only reason I'm writing about The Long Sleep is because the Le Citadell founder somehow has enough clout to load this tape with underground heavyweights – smokedope2016, jackzebra, 300SkullsAndCounting, and Gabriella from The Femcels, for some reason – who have no business turning up on a project this shoddy.

Actually, the reason they're here is probably strictly business, because I have to imagine Swords2 shelled out a couple year's worth of Christmas money to get his favorite cloud-rappers and London oddballs on a project that would otherwise (and probably still will) be relegated to the RYM dustbin. I don't mean to speculate about Swords2's finances, but this really does feel like the mixtape version of the rich, lonely kid from middle-school getting his parents to buy him the coolest birthday party in town just so people show up. A couple people whose tastes I trust are heralding this as the emo-rap equivalent to lo-fi emo provocateurs Brave Little Abacus, which might be true yet doesn't exactly benefit from the fact that Brave Little Abacus fucking suck. My recommendation? Don't bother listening to The Long Sleep unless the doldrums of the new year have you down that bad for new music, or if you're a smokedope2016 completionist.

Step 2 This - The First Step Demo

Anyways, onto another band with "2" in their name. This one fucking smokes. Step 2 This are a new hardcore band from Jacksonville whose debut demo, The First Step Demo, adds more ammo to the mounting case that Florida has as many great hardcore bands in the 2020s as New York or California. As the name implies, these four cuts are geared toward fast footwork on the dancefloor, except this is so much better than the fine-yet-forgettable demo-core fodder that packed the genre's pantry in 2025.

The vocals steal the show here, with a growling, grrrring frontman who delivers every line with spit-flicking rage, and backup shouts from his bandmates who sound like actual side characters with their own personalities rather than anonymous background whoopers. I'd compare these tracks to Stop and Think for the attitude and to first-LP Restraining Order for how goddamn catchy each one of these tunes are. This is too good to get lost in the demo deluge. I think this band are going to be important.

Gallery - Gallery

I don't know much about Gallery. The New York City duo just released their self-titled debut on Boxing Day, and the only information they've provided is that the 14 songs were supposedly written and recorded from 2019-2021. I'm skeptical that an esoteric electronic project co-led by a professional sneaker photographer with some serious clout in the fine art world are just now dumping their seven-year-old tracks onto the internet, but I have no choice other than to believe Gallery's timeline. Either way, this shape-shifting lot of eerie electronica and shimmering outsider rap has a mystical appeal. With a toolkit of brittle drum machines, gleaming synths, and incoherently auto-tuned mumble-croons, Gallery construct a vivid score for nighttime cruises that's as unnervingly mesmerizing as one of Howie Ratner's trips to the diamond district.

Cement Diver - Stuck Inside the Mirror

Cement Diver are a shoegaze band I first became aware of through their 2023 split with Fawn, the San Antonio group that Cement Diver mastermind James Garcia used to play in. I really enjoyed Fawn's 2025 EP Paper Thin, and I also enjoy the depressive slow-gaze that permeates Cement Diver's new EP Stuck Inside the Mirror. The dirgey first track, "Rearrange Me," is a bit of a red herring for what's to come, as the EP hits its sweet-spot with delicately twangy slowcore crawls like "It Has to Be This Way" and "Every Single Day." Even when the instrumentation leaves a little bit to be desired, there's a morose sadness baked into these songs that I find very compelling.

That genuine sense of pain and anguish climaxes with the nine-minute closer, "Fallen Leaves," a slumped-over shoegaze trudge that bashes through the same mud-caked chords until it resolves by fading into numbed silence. More and more, shoegaze is becoming a musical vessel for young Americans to channel their doomer angst and dire heartbreak through, as evidenced by the explosion of "nu-" and grungegaze bands over the last few years. Cement Diver taps into the same emotional vein as the groups in that milieu, but the music is a little bit more mature, and nothing about this release feels like a fashionable put-on. This is real-deal miserabilia.

Chasing Down

Uriel Avila
of
Trauma Ray

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

Trauma Ray are sneakily becoming one of the biggest bands in the American shoegaze underground. Since their 2024 LP Chameleon, a hefty binding of starry-night sprawl and earth-quaking force, the Dallas-Fort Worth band have toured with Panchiko, Deafheaven, and most recently Loathe, and I saw first-hand the impact that these opening slots are having on Trauma Ray's fanbase. They ripped a last-minute DIY show in a 100-cap room in Pittsburgh last fall, and the venue was swarmed with young kids who hovered over the Trauma Ray merch booth and then transcended through the ceiling during the band's pulverizing set. It felt like a confirmation of their hype, and it got me excited for whatever the band would end up doing next.

Now, the next has arrived. Earlier this week, Trauma Ray announced a new EP called Carnival and dropped a brooding, doom-gazing lead single dubbed "Hannibal." It's a half-step heavier than where Trauma Ray sat on Chameleon, but frontman Uriel Avila's lightweight sing-song glows in the center of the blackness like a burning ember. For this week's Chasing Down Q&A, I asked Avila about the band's new tunes, the evil clown aesthetic, touring with Loathe, his favorite Dallas-Fort Worth bands, the most underrated Trauma Ray song, and more. Read the full interview below.