It's the best thing Infant Island have released by a mile and it's one of the most stunning albums to come out of the whole recent screamo revival yet. As on Infant Island's previously released music, Beneath pulls from chaotic screamo, shimmering post-rock, some more melodic post-hardcore/emo type stuff, and some absolutely vicious metallic stuff too. But Beneath also spreads its wings further than anything Infant Island have put out yet, with a deeper dedication to both Eno-esque ambient music ("Colossal Air," "Someplace Else") and crackling noise ("Signed In Blood"). Music like that is sometimes intentionally written as "background music," but Infant Island make those parts sound as suspenseful as their more accessible, in-your-face songs. They're sequenced in such a way that they act like bridges between the vocal-oriented songs, and they're never skippable; without them, the other songs wouldn't hit as hard. Beneath also pushes the various styles of music that Infant Island experiment with to their extremes, and it fuses these styles together more seamlessly than ever. The sludge/black metal hybrid of opener "Here We Are" might be the heaviest song Infant Island have released yet, while parts of "Stare Spells" are downright beautiful in a way this band only hinted at previously. And the songs on this album rarely stay in one place for long or fit neatly into individual subgenres. They'll do things like move from delicate post-rock to spastic screamo to Neurosis-y sludge metal in the span of two minutes (as they do on "Content"), and it never sounds forced or out of place. Infant Island have also upped their musicianship game (the drumming on this album is the not-so-secret-weapon) and the production blows away that of their debut. Sometimes screamo benefits from raw, lo-fi production, but this album sounds big and crystal-clear, and it only helps bring out the best in Infant Island's songs.

On Viewing, Stay Inside pretty much do it all. They've got the loose, Midwestern-style sounds, the tougher East Coast post-hardcore sounds, and some straight-up screamo. They've got sprawling, post-rocky parts. They've got the token acoustic closer (which, token or not, is one of the album's best songs). They've got the kind of polished production and scream/sung dual vocals that make them sound like they'd be the biggest breakout band of 2003, but they avoid the more negative traits of mainstream emo and still sound more closely tied to the indie/underground-centric '90s and '10s waves. They sound like they're playing to the people in the nosebleeds even if bands that sound like this in 2020 are more likely playing in the backs of bars, and they bare it all emotionally in the process. It's always a risk to put yourself out there and make a record this heartfelt and this vulnerable, but the risk is so worth it when it results in cathartic, life-affirming music like Viewing.

LA screamo band Nuvolascura released their great self-titled debut album in January 2019, and they're now back just a year and a half later with their sophomore album. Like the debut, they made this one with Jack Shirley, whose work with bands like Loma Prieta, Deafheaven, and State Faults makes him a great fit for Nuvolascura's heavy yet atmospheric/melodic screamo, and As We Suffer From Memory and Imagination only sounds bigger and better and tighter than its predecessor. Nuvolascura sound like a more confident band this time around, and they've really expanded their sound, with a greater emphasis on sprawling post-rock and tech-y math rock, but not at the sacrifice of their fast, aggressive sound (all of these songs clock in around just one or two minutes, except one that almost makes it to three). The album can be dark and discordant or bright and melodic, and often these quickly-shapeshifting songs incorporate two or more moods into their brief running times. The album's sequence is a big part of the appeal too -- there are standout tracks, but As We Suffer From Memory and Imagination functions best when it's heard as one big piece of music (and it only takes 21 minutes to hear it that way).

There's so much to this album -- ear-piercing screamo, anthemic post-hardcore, delicate post-rock, black metally fury, and more -- and Boneflower bring it all together in a way that feels simultaneously familiar and inventive. If you've ever wished Pianos Become the Teeth would make an album that had the post-rock/screamo of their early days and the soaring clean-sung hooks of their more recent material all at once, A(r)mour just might be the thing you're looking for.

No matter what's happening within screamo at any given moment, Envy are always a constant. The Japanese band have been around since the genre's inception in the '90s, and they remain one of the best and most influential bands. When bands like Thursday helped bring screamo to the American mainstream in the 2000s, Envy released a split with them. When Envy's influence was impossible to ignore on breakout 2010s metal bands like Deafheaven and emo bands like La Dispute, Deafheaven and La Dispute both brought them on tour. They're as musically relevant today as they were the day they released their 2001 classic All the Footprints You've Ever Left and the Fear Expecting Ahead, and their new music has continued to rival their classics. Their last album, 2015's Atheist's Cornea, rivaled any of the similar music coming out at that time, and now they're finally back with a followup to that album, and it's yet another triumph. Whether you're coming to this album as a longtime Envy fan or you've been pointed in its direction because you like the newer bands Envy influenced, The Fallen Crimson will deliver. Like its predecessor, it stands tall next to Envy's classics and it sounds as fresh and forward-thinking as anything happening today within screamo, emo, metal, post-rock, and beyond. It's got gorgeous, sweeping crescendos as well as moments of brute force. It's got almost as much of an emphasis on spoken word as it does on larynx-tearing shrieks. It's genuinely great music that succeeds outside of any context at all. Envy have remained an important, influential band by keeping their ears to the ground, welcoming new generations of fans and band-friends, and consistently making music that can be loved in the moment, without feeling like you need to "do your homework" on what makes them so important and influential. And with The Fallen Crimson, they've done it all over again.

Cordoba, Spain's Viva Belgrado pretty much arrived fully formed. By the time they released their 2014 debut album Flores, carne (which followed a demo and an EP), they had developed a European-style post-rock/screamo blend that was as well crafted as the classic bands they were influenced by. But on this year's Bellavista -- their third album and first in four years -- Viva Belgrado prove that they're not content to stay within the confines of screamo. They've still got some harsh, screamy parts and some explosive post-rock crescendos on this album, but as they themselves said in the track-by-track breakdown of the album that they gave Idioteq, La Dispute were a big influence this time around, and you can very much hear that band's style of shouted-word, proggy post-hardcore in this LP. It's a more dynamic record than the first two, and it's cleaner and more melodic while also being more experimental. It's hard to avoid making the La Dispute comparison, but Viva Belgrado fuse that type of sound with their pre-existing style to the point where Bellavista never really sounds like one other band in particular. The band's new approach also puts their lyrics more in the forefront than ever, and though I don't know what the Spanish band is singing (without reading the translated lyrics on Bandcamp), the language of the emotion they convey is universal.

On 27 Miles Underwater, Jimmy Wizard doesn't just sound a little like Perry Farrell; Higher Power have jam-packed the album with mountain-sized choruses that give Jane's Addiction a run for their money. They've got soaring, shoegaze-tinged alt-rock hooks that can recall anything from The Smashing Pumpkins to Deftones. They've got a knack for combining chugging hardcore with radio-friendly choruses in a way that recalls early 2000s Roadrunner faves Glassjaw. It feels like the modern-day equivalent of the moment when NYHC-born bands like Gorilla Biscuits offshoot CIV and Youth of Today offshoot Shelter got a taste of major label/MTV success in the '90s and even scored minor hits like "Can't Wait One Minute More" and "Here We Go" (respectively). For an actually modern comparison, 27 Miles Underwater is kinda like if their current labelmates Turnstile made a record where every song was like "Moon" or the second half of "Generator," or if Title Fight had given in to their alt-rock desires without going full shoegaze. Full review here.

Music moves in roughly 20-year cycles so it's no surprise that early 2000s melodic post-hardcore is making a comeback right now. A handful of great new bands are influenced by that sound, and some of the classic bands are making genuinely inspired comebacks. We've seen bands like Alexisonfire, Hopesfall, and Thrice release great new music that not only rivaled their classic material but took the band in new directions, and now Protest the Hero are back with their first new album in six years, and it does the same. By their 2008 sophomore album Fortress, Protest the Hero had perfected a prog/math/pop/metal/post-hardcore fusion that was like The Mars Volta, Coheed & Cambria, Between the Buried and Me, The Fall of Troy, and My Chemical Romance in a blender, and as a lot of bands in this realm fizzled out or changed up their styles, PTH just got better at it. Their most recent album, 2013's Volition, did this type of thing in the early 2010s as well as the genre's biggest bands did in the early 2000s, and now Palimpsest is keeping it alive in the early 2020s. It's been a while since I've heard a new album do this kind of unabashedly bombastic, flamboyant, proggy post-hardcore, but Palimpsest nails it. And the cherry on top is that this band -- who have always had radical left-wing politics -- gave the album a powerful message that's even more timely now than the band could've ever predicted. As they explained in a recent Loudwire interview, it's a concept album about early 1900s America and the ways in which Americans rewrite their own history to omit the oppression of Black and indigenous people that the country was built upon. And if any Trump-loving fans take issue with it? "They can kick rocks as far as I'm concerned," singer Rody Walker said. "Fuck 'em."

Like 2016's The King of Whys, Mike Kinsella made this one with S. Carey of Bon Iver and frequent S. Carey collaborator Zach Hanson, and the three of them have developed a chemistry over the years that's even stronger on The Avalanche than on The King of Whys. In the past, mathy, noodly guitars were Mike Kinsella's calling card, but on The Avalanche, he takes a more simple approach -- strummy, folky guitars and textural atmosphere -- letting the lyrics do even more of the talking than you'd already expect from an Owen album. And the lyrics on this one are as devastating as the heart-wrenching songs he wrote half a lifetime ago, but with entirely new perspective. There's a built-in nostalgia to this album that longtime fans will quickly feel, but the songwriting on this album is as urgent now as Owen's early 2000s albums were then. You don't need to be a longtime fan to appreciate it, and you don't need to start somewhere else if you're new to his music. This is a fine addition to an already vast discography, and it's as unique and powerful as just about anything else you'll find in it.

Loma Prieta and Lord Snow are two of the best screamo bands of the last decade or so, so it's very exciting to learn that Sean Leary of Loma Prieta (and Mare Island, Elle and Ysidro) and Erik Anderson of Lord Snow (and Lautrec) have come together in the new band Stormlight. They've been working on their 11-song debut album Natoma with producer Jack Shirley (who's also frequently worked with Loma Prieta) for the past three years, and after finishing it this past April, they just released it on Zegema Beach Records over the weekend. Sean handles guitar, bass, and vocals, while Erik takes care of the album's manic drumming, and the whole album is genuinely great stuff. It's not just a repeat of Loma Prieta or Lord Snow, but fans of both bands will most likely find this instantly appealing. It has a coarse and chaotic side, but more often than not, this album is bright, melodic, and uplifting.

Seattle's Floral Tattoo dropped their sophomore album You Can Never Have a Long Enough Head Start on Bandcamp at the very beginning of 2020 without any of the usual press-driven hype cycles, and it's quickly becoming one of the young year's most buzzed-about albums thanks almost entirely to word of mouth alone. Alex Anderson (who started Floral Tattoo a few years ago as a solo project before it morphed into a full band) says, "it's kind of about growing up, kind of about being trans, kind of about getting better, and kind of about arson. Or it's just a collection of songs." It has that mid 2000s indie vibe where it sounds small and lo-fi on the surface but it's bursting with arena-sized ambition, and it seems to almost effortlessly hop between different styles of music. There's wall-of-sound shoegaze, there's emo that ranges from the nasally Modern Baseball/Weakerthans kind ("She") to the mopey Tigers Jaw kind ("Oar House"), there's ska-tinged punk that kinda sounds like Keasbey Nights-era Catch-22 ("Don't Try Things"), and there's even an interpolation of Black Sabbath's "War Pigs" (on "[redding forest fire / fermi]"). The whole album sounds dense and claustrophobic, but the melodies and the emotion all find a way to shine through.

i>parted​/​departed​/​apart follows their Frail Hands' 2017 self-titled debut album and 2018 split with Ghost Spirit, and it's Frail Hands' first release as a four-piece since the departure of vocalist Dawn Almeda due to vocal strain. Like their debut, it was recorded by Palmer Jamieson and mixed and mastered by Jack Shirley. Dawn's presence is of course missed, but Frail Hands still rip as a four-piece, and they've managed to create an album that channels all the same energy as their debut and the Ghost Spirit split, while simultaneously turning over a new leaf. The new album has everything from chaotic, pulverizing screamo to gorgeous post-rocky passages, and a few flashes of math rock as well, and it all blurs together for an album that's greater than the sum of its parts.

This is a four-way split from four very killer screamo bands: 소나기 aka Sonagi (a new-ish band featuring Ryan Slausson of Brooklyn’s Closer who make their recorded debut on this split), Edmonton’s Obroa-skai, Chicago’s Indisposed, and Indiana’s Coma Regalia (who count Tom Schlatter as a member on this recording). It’s called The Cold Promise of Uncertainty, it’s out now on Middle-Man Records, and it’s very cool stuff all around. Each bands’ contributions are a little different -- Sonagi’s are more desperate and melodic, Obroa-Skai’s are more raw and in your face, Indisposed’s one song is more atmospheric, post-rocky, and longer than any other track on this (at five and a half minutes), and Coma Regalia’s veer a little more in a hard-hitting punk/hardcore direction -- but they all go together very well. The whole thing is a gem from start to finish, and it won’t take you very long to listen to it that way.

Closedown are a new-ish post-hardcore/screamo band from Ohio (formed by two members of Wolf Teeth) who just put out their killer new EP Bask In The Dancing Light, which follows their recent Funeral Diner cover. It's sort of somewhere in the progressive post-hardcore orbit of Circle Takes The Square and early La Dispute, but also with some sprawling post-rock, some more metallic tendencies, and other cool stuff thrown in. If you tend to like this kind of music, this EP is not to miss.