Aster Tracks

Southfield, MI’s I Prevail has come through with their third record. Having seemingly moved on from the traction gained off of a viral cover song the band is really taking off, getting radio play as well as huge tours including one with long-asleep post-hardcore vets Pierce the Veil. Now, personally I Prevail is not a band I go to for much quality as these types of radio rock metalcore bands are a dime a dozen these days. Though, while I don’t find this record to be exactly groundbreaking or think it has much of anything new to offer you, I think the songs themselves are worth paying a little bit of attention to. Don’t get me wrong, this band isn’t the first to try and recreate Hybrid Theory in the 2020s and a lot of the rap verses are pretty uninspired. There is however some hip hop influence in the instrumentation that is worth a second look. The song “Self-Destruction” for example, which features some less than impressive rapping but utilizes this beat-like structure to present a co...

  California progressive and post-hardcore supergroup, Royal Coda are back for a third record. Unless you’ve been outside of the Swancore sphere socially for the past few years you probably know the deal here already; ex-members of Stolas, A Lot of Like Birds and most recently Will Swan of Dance Gavin Dance come together every so often to write, well, exactly what you expect. That’s just it too, this record is more or less just more of the same. I feel like with Tilian Pearson’s antics this year everyone is looking for the band in this lane they’re allowed to listen to and Royal Coda just sort of fit the bill. They also make a consistent splash for a short time off of the inclusion of Sergio Medina and Kurt Travis alone. Not that these two don’t deserve the praise, mind you, if there’s one thing I feel this group is good at it’s their respective roles in their band but ultimately feel like that’s all this is. At about the halfway point of this record I just sort of get bored and I ...