Browsing Tag

grunge

Plug your heartstrings into the frequency of desire with Post Script Philosophy’s alt-rock overdose of emotion, ‘Butterflies’

Posted on 24 April 2026

Post Script Philosophy launched a new alt-rock inquiry into the subjugation of romanticism with their latest single, Butterflies, which is set to drop on April 24th.

Augmented by the overdriven ferocity of grunge, the anthemic hooks of pop-punk with all the melodic phrasing of 00s alt-rock, the single ticks every conceivable alt-rock box as it plugs your heartstrings into the frequency of a diehard romantic in the throes of losing control of their emotions.

Every progression feels alchemised to visualise the torrid flux of emotions derived from uncertainty and anxiety as you try to find a foothold in a fledgling relationship, only to sink further into the soul-churning sickness of desire. There are flashes of Jimmy Eat World in the emotional voltage and hints of Silverchair in the scorched intensity, yet Post Script Philosophy keep the nerve endings of the track wholly their own, letting the chorus surge with wounded urgency and melodic conviction.

Butterflies carries a weight that reaches far beyond youthful yearning. The band first built their name in the mid-2000s through EP releases, radio attention, and emotionally charged live shows across Australia’s East Coast. After the devastating loss of bassist Josh Ingram, the project came to a halt. Seventeen years later, renewed connection between the remaining members brought them back to creating together, and Butterflies now stands as part grief-soaked reckoning, part forward motion, charged with memory, fear, and meaning.

Butterflies is now available to stream on all major platforms via this link.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

heaven // alone Let Vulnerability Breathe Through the Post-Hardcore Rupture of ‘escaping myself’

Posted on 29 March 2026

heaven // alone refuse to sit still inside any neat genre tag. Emo, post-rock, grunge, metal, post-hardcore, whichever pigeonhole gets dragged out, their sound pushes straight past it. On escaping myself, that viscerally expansive, evocatively intense aesthetic lands with the force of a bad thought looping at 3 am, then mutating into a primal communication with the void. For an artist working with this much emotional exposure, there’s nothing mild-mannered about the way they let the weight of the track speak for itself.

Opening with an augmentation on the sludgy Seattle grunge sound, escaping myself winds into a melodic post-rock intersection where the vulnerability the title so cuttingly alludes to gets the room it needs to breathe. That sense of emotional suspension soon gives way to the point where the screamo vocals bleed across the adrenalised volition in the post-hardcore instrumentation, tearing through the track with a fevered urgency that you’re bound to catch.

For anyone who has ever felt plagued by their own consciousness and pleaded for a way to disconnect from their past, present, and future, this will hit hard enough to warrant a GBH charge.

escaping myself is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify.

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Puppies & a Demon blurred psychotropic lines of lo-fi alt-realism in ‘Illusions’

Posted on 17 January 2026

Puppies & a Demon rode the crux of the surf rock wave in Illusions, their psychedelically twisted, lo-fi cruise through grungy indie territory. In one hand, they clutch the kaleidoscopic soul of the 60s, in the other, the sludge of the alt-90s, all while churning up their own brand of sonic dissonance that doesn’t ask for attention so much as it hypnotically absorbs it.

The title may suggest ambiguity, but the creative conviction in the track’s layered textures leaves no room for doubt. Whether you’re new to the idea of reality being little more than smoke and screen, or you’ve been reading behind the veil for years, the impact of this trip is the same. It’s a cosmic exit sign lit by garagey distortion and psychotropic catharsis. The vocals drift between sardonic sweetness and cryptic harbingering, chameleonically slipping in and out of harmony, allowing the freaked-out to be comforted while ruffling the complacent.

Puppies & a Demon are already gaining notoriety for their commitment to sonically warped storytelling. Illusions feels like it bubbled up through the cracks in the pavement after a rainfall of existential dread and came coated in the kind of fuzz that illuminates. There’s method in their madness, but they never let that get in the way of the obscurity. The track’s lo-fi roots hold steady while the band lets their freak flag fly somewhere between the Californian coast and an abandoned squat’s basement speaker stack.

Illusions is now available on all major streaming platforms, including YouTube. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Black Sunday drove existential dread through the Seattle vein of grunge in When I Die

Posted on 18 November 2025

Black Sunday pierced themselves into the sombre vein of the 90s Seattle sound in When I Die, a reflectively remorseful single that refuses to romanticise mortality, but claws at it with raw existential unease. It imagines the hollowed-out moments before death with harrowing sincerity, questioning what will remain—loneliness or tenderness. Tension bleeds through every inch of the track, rising into a hard rock deathroll that drags the weight of a life measured against the inevitability of vanishing.

The instrumental arrangement is tighter than a straitjacket, pushing and pulling against the atmosphere of classic grunge while driving a rhythm that doesn’t force urgency; it makes you dwell in it. That pacing is where When I Die gains its bite. It mourns what is not yet lost but lingers like a shadow, hanging just close enough to haunt. The guitar tones bruise like Soundgarden’s rawest refrains, and the vocal performance wears the fatigue of someone bracing for their final breath.

San Diego-based Black Sunday is keeping rock loud, raw, and loaded with meaning. They’ve built their sound on crushing riffs, thunderous drums, and a reverence for the foreboding introspection of bands like Alice in Chains and Pearl Jam, while pushing their own sonic clarity through the noise. As they gear up to release their debut full-length album in 2025, When I Die sets a high-water mark for what they’re capable of when they let grief, dread, and reflection run the show.

When I Die is now available on all major streaming platforms via this link.

– Review by Amelia Vandergast

Smiling Jackals flipped the mirror on our schadenfreude in Freakshow

Posted on 8 November 2025

Smiling Jackals rolled out the alt-rock Freakshow with their latest single, which has made its way from the 90s to our epoch, which still thrives upon the exploitation of punching down the most disenfranchised. Decades have passed, we still haven’t learned our lesson, and Smiling Jackals’ social dissection is just as cutting as the day it was penned. Sounding like it came out of Chris Cornell’s studio, the atmospheric intensity of the grungy retaliation to televised misery drags you in by the scruff of your neck, uses the distortion to make you stand unguarded against the thematic core of the track, instilling you with deep shame you’ve ever felt schadenfreude every time you declare something as cringe on TikTok while you pretend that humiliation is cultural execution.

With a sense of visceral volition that stands up against The Holy Bible era of The Manics, Smiling Jackals are one of the only bands on this side of the millennium strong enough to carry us through the inertia of modernity. After more than a decade apart, they’re back in the same place, same room, same raw energy. Older. Louder. Sharper. Their third self-released single on their label, Smalltimeville Records, shows no signs of mellowing. Originally written in the late 90s during the peak of tabloid talk show voyeurism, Freakshow finds new relevance in an age where shame is monetised and streamed, not just consumed but performed.

Freakshow is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 
Review by Amelia Vandergast

Post-grunge was dragged through distortion in Hello Enemy’s lead LP single, ‘Helter Shelter’

Posted on 28 October 2025

Explore the middle ground between Metallica, Alice in Chains, and Soil, and you’ll find Hello Enemy with the sanctifying scuzz in their standout single, Helter Shelter, taken from their freshly released album, That Goes on There. Filthy, adrenalised, and carrying the full anatomy of a grunge earworm, it drags nostalgia into the present, snarling and kicking.

All the hallmarks of the alt-90s Seattle sound are there, but what makes it hit harder is the vindicating volition delivered through the harder instrumentals, which don’t have room to hold prisoners. There’s no posturing or pastiche; just raw sonic muscle blurring the lines between grunge, hard rock, and metal. Whether you want to pigeonhole them or not, there’s no denying they radiate the kind of aura and authenticity that rarely reverberates through the underground. It’s that unteachable intensity that pulls them out of mimicry and places them firmly in the pantheon of post-grunge panache.

Hello Enemy, who’ve dropped 17 singles across the last three years, are no strangers to momentum. With their debut album released in May 2025, they’ve already earned high rotation on US and Australian airwaves, co-headlined festivals, and powered through a self-funded tour – all while staying faithful to their ethos of minimal gear, maximum sound. That Goes on There wrestles with themes of balance and resilience, but Helter Shelter is its rowdiest, most cathartic moment – an anthem forged for both dive bars and stadium stages.

Helter Shelter is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Dying Habit Unleashed a Tsunami of Angst and Scuzz in Their Seminal Single, Bow

Posted on 28 September 2025

Alchemists of scuzz, Dying Habit, sharpened the teeth of alt-90s nostalgia before dropping their latest single, Bow. Hit play and let the crunched, scuzzy, overdriven guitars gnash at the edges of your psyche, tearing through your synapses with tsunami-like intent while Nathan Jones’ vocals lock you into the emotional urgency at the heart of the track. It carries the weight of someone who has seen the darker corners of ennui and knows how to make poetry of it.

Hailing from the rugged island of Anglesey, Wales, Dying Habit have built a reputation for hurling out potent 90s-inspired alt-rock, anchored by Mark Jones’ drums, Daniel Garner’s bass, and Alan Hart’s dexterous guitar work. On Bow, those elements converge into something restless and visceral, fusing garage rock rancour, pop-punk intensity in the hook-stacked chorus, sludge-kissed grunge textures, and post-punk angularity as the lead guitars twist into their own moody conversation before the production erupts in distortion.

Following on from their July single Three Letter View and their lauded 2024 album The Chaos of Silence, Bow feels like a contemplative but defiant step forward, reflecting on the fear of rejection and how self-doubt throttles ambition until you’re willing to take the leap anyway.

Bow is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

FGA Shakes Up Summer with Alt-Rock Swagger and Sunburnt Distortion in ‘Island Time’

Posted on 28 July 2025

Texan musician FGA did what so few would dream to by pouring pure sun-bleached nostalgia into the woozy cocktail that is Island Time, a single that proves alt-rock anthems can come with a riotous splash of lo-fi pop punk and an undercurrent of Britpop swagger. With a track that lets you drift on the exotic ebb and flow of the ocean, while still feeling the adrenaline ripple through the layers of distortion, FGA ensures you never get too comfortable on the lilo—there’s always a snarl ready to jolt you from your daydream.

From the opening riff, it’s clear that Freddie Gibbs’ artistic compass is guided by the classics (Led Zeppelin, the Ramones, Nirvana) but he’s never content to play muso museum curator. FGA took the DIY ethos of Austin’s underground house party scene and poured it into his own home studio, fusing together soaring melodies, stoner rock sensibilities, and grunge angst. Dan Konopka of OK Go lends his rhythms to the chaos, creating the kind of groove that will soundtrack every self-respecting summer.

If Pavement ever penned a holiday soundtrack, it would sound like Island Time; and that’s probably the best endorsement we can give to FGA’ as he proves he’s swimming in all the right pools of influence, but always adds his own tidal force.

Island Time is now available on all major streaming platforms, including Spotify. 


Review by Amelia Vandergast

Smokecharmer Turned Protest into Grungy Groove Rock Power with ‘Breadline’

Posted on 14 June 2025

Breadline, the latest single by Smokecharmer, plugs into grungy Alice in Chains-esque sludgy tones and feeds early Black Sabbath-style weight into the intensity of the angst-charged release. There’s no room for partisanship here, just the outpouring of an artist sick of the suffocation of the inequality that leaves the majority scratching for a living while the rich pick our scabs as we asphyxiate.

Midway through the single, the amplification of angst drags you deeper into the static before the guitar solo threads its way through the stylised discord, offering an outlet for the fury instilled. Smokecharmer doesn’t rile their audience and leave them festering in scorn. The energy is sculpted, channelled, and given a sonic space worth returning to time and time again.

Founded by Stephen Taylor, whose past work with Sixteen Horsepower, Wovenhand, and Superjoint laid down his legacy in underground rock, Smokecharmer brings a new dimension to protest music. Alongside Michael Parent, Raul Garza and Andre Laurent, the band taps into grungy groove rock that holds just as much soul as it does sludge.

Breadline is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast

Smiling Jackals Sharpened the Edge of Addiction and Apathy in ‘Health Junkie’

Posted on 14 June 2025

Smiling Jackals didn’t just subvert the usual rock ‘n’ roll tropes in Health Junkie, they twisted the neck of tired clichés and bent James Dean Bradfield-esque guitar solos around cerebrally sardonic snarls until rock and punk created enough friction to singe the skin. The pulse of the progressions itches to break into the cataclysmic outcry of the choruses, but every moment of restraint and release is measured with magnetic precision.

There’s no empty swagger in Health Junkie, only feral finesse. Smiling Jackals are clearly on a mission to etch out a legacy with volition charged by intellectual firepower. The nostalgia-choked touches may nod to their formative sonic lineage, but there’s no coasting on borrowed memory. They weaponise the raw grungy fidelity as a conduit for angst, catharsis, and lyrical gold with enough weight to put them on the Forbes rich list, if sonic currency counted.

Reigniting the flame they lit before stepping back in the early 2000s, the trio’s return carries scars instead of sheen. Barry Sloane’s vocals hit like serrated confessionals, Nick Kilroe keeps the rhythm volatile and muscular, while Rob Nico’s lyrics cut between social commentary and spiritual unrest with riffs that kick like divine retribution.

Health Junkie is now available to stream on all major platforms, including SoundCloud. 

Review by Amelia Vandergast