Hi, everyone, Ughthony Ughtano here, the internet's busiest music nerd. It's time for a review of this new Knocked Loose album, You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To.

Here we have the third full-length studio album from this metalcore and hardcore act, Knocked Loose, a respectably heavy band from Louisville, Kentucky, that has been at it for over a decade now. And while their two previous records up until this point certainly suddenly kicked ass, I wouldn't say either of them brought a sound that was specific enough to where they stood out in the very dense and saturated world of metalcore. However, on their 2021 EP, A Tear in the Fabric of Life, the band did begin to get more creative with tension, grooves, sounds, and sound effects that they surrounded their pummeling breakdowns with.

On this new album, they continue mining for creative ways to make their skull-crushing strain of metalcore that much more nuanced and colorful, which is a good thing. Finer details generally are nice. But simultaneously on this record, Knocked Loose is very clearly fully engaged in the broad global loud rock arms race to generate the most blaring and punishing sound possible on an album.

Right now, with this record, I would say it is Knocked Loose that is pulling out to the front. Now, being real, I'm a New England boy. I've heard my fair share of metalcore over the years, and I truly believe this record is honestly pushing the envelope for the genre a little bit, which is pretty surprising because I didn't think anything was ever really going to top something like a Kurt Ballou production. I mean, no shade to the guy. Obviously, he's partially responsible for some of my favorite albums of all time. But the thickness and bass and clarity on this Knocked Loose record is just incredible, due in part to producer and songwriter Drew Fulk, who got his start with metalcore bands such as Motionless In White. Over the years, he's done his fair share of stuff for a lot of rap artists, too.

I can honestly see how all of that is coalescing on this album because, again, the low-end in the mixes on this thing are incredible. The attention to detail on the editing side, too, to make sure every drum hit and every chug in the guitar is on the breakdown. It just hits with maximum impact, making sure at times there's these tiny moments of silence in between the riffs. You're getting that complete spectrum from the quietest moments of the record to the loudest. Even though in many ways this record is assembled pretty methodically, it still Grooves very organically. Overproduced or overworked are not terms I would use to describe this record at all.

On top of that, Knocked Loose is going the extra mile on these tracks to experiment more with different grooves, sound effects, eerie little sounds and guitar parts to make their breakdowns and make their transitions and their buildups that much more harrowing and eerie, bringing more depth to these explosive and aggressive tracks. A more meat-and-potatoes metalcore album of this style would have been a lot more forgettable. But instead, the blistering intro on this record kicks off with some eerie ambience, blast beats, layers of feedback to.

And after all of that is when we start getting the cromagnon riffs with lyrics describing a never-ending primal desire for comfort that is never quite satisfied, being driven mad by this desire to a degree. While it's not the catchiest song on the record, it certainly sets the tone very well in terms of the narratives to follow and just the volume and intensity that we're going to be experiencing for most of this thing.

Then on the following piece by piece, we are in full breakdown mode. We really catch the full range and punch of the drums with them playing at a reasonable pace. The sustain on that snare is massive. When it gets whacked, you really hear it like, ring out for a bit. It sounds like an industrial oil drum being beaten to pieces with a pool cue. The guitars sound like heavy machinery being crushed by a chorus of hydraulic presses.

Meanwhile, frontman Brian Garris' vocals are just relentless, throat-shredding screams that are done in this higher register, very nasely timbre, too. Not concerned at all in delivering in more of a deep and guttural style, which honestly, I think makes his lyrics more intelligible and his performances a lot more animalistic and varied.

"The pain I've swallowed has been stuck in my throat."

The way he delivers his screams makes for a nice contrast with the background vocals, too, anyway.

From here, the band expands the sonic palate of the record a little bit with guest vocal Poppy on "Suffocate," whose input brings a lot to the record, especially during that creepy little spoken word passage, where she really manages to sear the lyrics of the track in my head. That's not even the catchiest part, because from here we have these sinister dissonant little guitar bits that sound like they're straight out of a horror movie trailer. In the final breakdown of the song, the drummer switches it up into a reggaeton groove, we're all of a sudden getting that in a metalcore context, and it works.

The seething bitterness and hatred and need for separation expressed in the lyrics on this track, is reinforced on the following, "Don't Reach For Me," whose opening bar stuck with me quite a bit. I dream of a cleansing wave "Reborn / Don't Reach For Me / No Lies Can Spread / From a tongue removed." I love the way these lyrics expand even further over these doomy and eerie, heavier guitar passages later into the track. Then again, once more after this strip back, break down passage. The progression of the track is great. There is a push and pull to each section, tension and release, which the band is so skilled at pulling off at this point. It's really an essential part of this record because it keeps the songs from getting stale despite many of them being so loud from front to back, so relentless.

It's now that I would like to point out that it's not just the flow of these tracks that is great, but the album overall, because it's varied enough to where it feels like I'm not just listening to one single sound or song or idea play out again and again and again. But it moves so tightly from track to track, from moment to moment. It's as if I'm not experiencing an album of single songs or anything like that. It's like some metalcore beat-down hardcore suite with various movements all working in tandem. The middle section comes together especially well with the way the finish of Don't Reach for me has this break neck transition into the much faster Moss Covers All. Then the way the eerie little guitar arpeggio that finishes that track off transitions into Take Me Home, which ends off with this slowly intensifying, anxiety-inducing wall of screaming guitars and feedback. The final moments of this record, in my opinion, keep things interesting, too. The chemistry between Brian and Chris Motionless on Slaughter House, too, definitely turns up the heat on the vocal end. There are some ghoulish, ooosing, drippy dissonant string bits laced into the guitars on the back end, too.

It feels the band is veering into a dark, almost gothic, blasphomus metal direction than just straight up metal core, which is confirmed on the calm that keeps you awake, where some of the chromatic guitar bits, the leads, and the Cookie Monster style death growls feel like they are really making a bit of a death core nod here, but doing it in a super tasteful way that fits in snugly with the rest of the LP. Lyrically, "Blinding Faith" really seals the deal with the record's bone to pick with religion and spirituality. Community, communicating internal fears of not really feeling in touch with the spirit as it were and not knowing what exactly that means, but simultaneously attacking the idea of blind faith and comparing it to just allowing yourself to be controlled.

With the closing track on the LP, the band really saved some of the slowest and heaviest and most dramatic moments for last. The whole thing really does sound like a movie soundtrack once again, and the riffs that end the record really feel like a dismal march into oblivion. And while I do think there are some finer details that are just so loud, so fast, and so aggressive, they fly by you, whether you want them to or not.

I still walked away from this record massively impressed with how it was engineered compositionally sonically and even conceptually, as the sound of this record, again, in my opinion, by metalcore standards, especially, is just incredible. Not only are the details and the balance there, but in terms of thickness, intensity, and heaviness, this is just the next step for the genre.

In terms of the narrative, you may or may not take personal issue with this album's personal perception and opinion on religion and faith. There is a lyrical consistency and focus that I can't deny. At least the band is trying to put some pretty poetic lyrics to these themes and tropes around blasphemy and just a lack of faith and a lack of belief. And also putting out there some sensible and understandable feelings around how destructive it can be to force yourself into feeling something or willing yourself to something when your heart's not really in it.

Then there's just the writing and performance side, which the guitar work, the riffs, the drumming, the vocals, they're all bold, they all hit hard, they all contribute to incredibly memorable moments across the entirety of the album. No one part of it feels like it's falling massively short or anything like that. While it may have been cooler to hear some more dynamics and variation across the LP, 27 minutes is also a very ideal length for this thing so that it doesn't overstay its welcome either.

That's this incredible, badass, thoughtful, boundary-pushing album that I'm really impressed with. Feeling a decent to strong 9 on this thing.

Anthony Fantano, Knocked Loose, forever.