genres: post-hardcore + mathcore
Going into this album, I didn’t have any awareness of AXTY. A song (“Until We Die”) showed up in my weekly recommended playlist from Spotify, and it was a good time. And then I realized it was part of an entire newly released album. A welcome surprise on one of the quieter weeks for new music this fall. It’s the perfect balance of an early career band that’s still trying on different sounds, but has the technical ability and ear for production to produce a consistently solid album. AXTY sound can best be summed up as an alternating blend of emo tinged post-hardcore and frenatic mathcore. Clean, crisp verses or choruses give way to moments of jagged dissonance at a moments notice, but it’s all very controlled. Although the influences may sound like an updated take on The Number Twelve Looks Like You, AXTY never reaches either the unhinged brutality or “whininess” (for lack of a better term, and not meant disparagingly) of that band, resulting in a much more accessible (though less ambitious) package.
Despite the emo and mathcore tendencies popping up on almost every track, there’s still a ton of variety that provides a surprising amount of differentiation. “Walk Away” is an accessible hard rock track with some djent inclinations, “Dead Inside” mixes some trap-metal in, and the aforementioned “Until We Die” approximates some of the best innovations in modern progressive metalcore. Some tracks are stronger than others, but despite all the experimentation (and occasionally questionable album pacing), there are no outright weak tracks here. The lyrics largely tackle mental health topics of anxiety and depression in a blunt and honest way, admirable both for their importance and providing a thematic cohesion linking the album together. There’s nothing entirely new in this blend of sounds, but the presentation is fresher and more accessible than most others working across these genres. As the band matures in their career, I expect we’ll see more of a unique sonic identity formed, but all in all this is a very strong debut that should appeal to a wide range of metalcore fans.
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