Dear Hollow’s Mathcore Madness [Things You Might Have Missed 2023]

Y’all ready to skronk? Cuz it’s ’bout to get skronky. I had a realization about midway this year that all I was doing was contributing mathcore releases to Kenstrocity‘s Stuck in the Filter pieces. So instead of painting myself as a one-trick pony who can only do math three times a month, I decided to reveal my cards as a mathcore sellout by the end of 2023. I have been given an incurably bad taste this year, and a spotlight under which I stand alone while commenters and colleagues alike chuck tomatoes and copies of Mercyful Fate’s Dead Again and Saxon’s Rock the Nations at me (saying, and I quote, “get some culture, you sellout”). See, when the inimitable Kronos left, he took with him the taste for the mathy skronk. I suppose Dolphin Whisperer has some math love built into him, but we’re too busy squabbling over details most of the time.¹

Thus, I have compiled a list of some mathcore releases you might, uh, tolerate! Because I have filtered and expressed opinions over acts like See You Next Tuesday, Sleepsculptor, Soulkeeper, and Squid Pisser (I’m not sure why I picked all mathcore acts that start with S, but here we are) you can go find ’em yourself if you’re soooo upset why I didn’t include them. Without further ado, let’s get skronky (another S!).

Better Lovers // God Made Me an Animal – Look, I get it’s an EP, but when your band consists of the instrumental section of the defunct Every Time I Die, the guitarist of Fit for an Autopsy and End, and the vocalist of the legendary The Dillinger Escape Plan, we can make some exceptions. Charisma and sleaze drip through the southern-fried leads of these four songs, while Greg Puciato’s unmistakably charismatic vocals rip across, formidable cleans gracing melodic noodling with a catchiness that contrasts with the dense groove. Speaking of the groove, they hit at just the right moments, recalling I Am Hollywood-era He is Legend in “Sacrificial Participant,” while punk speed graces “30 Under 13” with a franticness, while the riff in the title track is absolutely mammoth. Quite the lineup, and while the sound is what you’d largely expect from its ranks, the five-piece makes its debut EP just damn good mathcore.

Chamber // A Love to Kill For – Nashville’s Chamber enters the fray with a sound that weaponizes mathcore for maximum punishment, a tad like Frontierer meeting late-era The Tony Danza Tapdance Extravaganza in a knife-fight behind the old Kmart: down-tuned thuggishness, chunky and bruising rhythms, noodly riffs, and squealing leads.² Vocalist Jacob Lilly offers a vicious performance, his roars and fry vocals dripping with vitriol, while the cutthroat axework collapses and crushes around him, and drummer Taylor Carpenter hits the kit balancing rock-solid anchoring and pure mania. A Love to Kill For is a relentless metalcore attack barbed with hardcore punk, mathcore, and hints of deathcore: carefully calculated, intensely brutish, and worth every concussion Chamber can muster.

Euclid C Finder // The Mirror, My Weapon, I Love You – A balanced affair unafraid of the noisemaking, Baltimore’s Euclid C Finder (presumably named after the Fallout weapon) releases a grind-tinged math attack of viciousness and oddity in equal measure. Nineteen minutes of wonky rhythms, blasting percussion, manic dissonance, panic chords aplenty, and insane vocals greet the ears with the subtlety of a five-car pileup. It would be easy to dismiss The Mirror… as just another Dillinger– or Converge– worshiper, but then the groove hits. The trio balances its treble trouble with a chunky hit of downtuned intensity and gruff barks that gives respite to the million-miles-per-hour of noodly technicality. It’s a toothy and intense affair that never takes itself too seriously (i.e. “Jonathan Davis 10000 BC”) and never overstays its welcome.

Telos // Delude – What makes Copenhagen’s Telos unique is its blackened and noisy take on mathcore. Or, if you please, a mathy take on blackened hardcore – whatever floats your boat. A bit like if Hexis (with whom they released a split this year) and Botch had a scary-looking baby. Misanthropy oozes from every orifice and hostile noise fills negative space, ominous leads and dissonant plucking wearing haunting grooves into the brain. Tracks like “Bastion,” “I’ve Been Gone for So Long,” and “As Atlas Stumbled” are full-on assaults of intense proportions, while the more subdued ritualism and atmosphere in “I Accept / I Receive” and “Throne” show the depths of Telos’ lurching and rumbling depravity. Fans of mathcore and blackened hardcore would do well to do a headlong dive into this particular abyss.

Thin // Dusk – Mathcore gone grind. Reveling in tight descending patterns of insanity, with a fearlessness of skull-caving death metal, New York City’s Thin will beat you senseless with every weapon in its arsenal. A wall of noisy noodling, panic chords, and squalid feedback is erected with every attack, collapsing for death metal-inspired weight and dissonant plucking throughout that feels like homage to this year’s Asystole. Screamo orientation fuels the fire and brevity is the name of the game, but toss in formidable performances from all forces involved, with howling screeches giving way to gravelly gurgles, groovy riffs giving way to frantic tremolo, and the rhythm section cutting through the darkness. As the cheery acoustic strums of closer “Mangrove” sound in final respite, Thin revels in its sonic and lyrical pairing of nostalgia and trauma – a dark night of the soul.

Dead Soma // Pathos – A more rhythmic and atmospherically spidery but nonetheless viciously punishing take on mathcore. Best described as Loathe covering Converge songs, the sepia-toned and mysterious Deftones influence is unmistakable, but Sweden’s Dead Soma is unafraid to embrace the intensity. Hinting upon djent not unlike countrymen Vildhjarta and weighty rhythms like Car Bomb, the grooves are palpable and punishing, guided by the dead hands of electronic glitches and pinch harmonics and dragged by manic barks and screeches. Chino Moreno-esque whispery cleans and subdued mumbles add to the glitching and warm synthwork in the more laid-back tracks, which add further dynamic to the relentlessly fat riffs and mathy noodling (see: “Life and Limb” to “Error Blemish”). Warmly atmospheric, it carries a vintage tone by the vocals and synth, but is ultimately uncompromising in its brutality.

MouthBreather // Self-Tape – This one is less mathcore by sound and more by name. The Boston collective’s debut LP I’m Sorry Mr. Salesman (another filter cleaning I contributed to) was Coalesce-meets-Converge-core through and through in a groovy take on mathcore, but after a come-to-metalcore-Jesus moment they go straight for the jugular with a nu-infested, groove-infected -core sound for Self-Tape. The viciousness is front and center, with aggression and fury spewing from every chug and growl, with its storied mathcore history offering its energetic bite. Now featuring more deathcore weight and nu-metal influence to slam into your sorry-ass ears alongside the ghosts of Christmas skronk, Self-Tape reflects a descent into madness through its very reasonable twenty-three minutes of film references. Maybe you’ll think it’s just metalcore with no mathcore in sight, and you’d be right, but (a) that’s why it’s at the end of this piece and (b) your head will be bobbing so hard you won’t care.