Review Summary: You won't forget before you suffer
Envision yourself trapped in a nightmare. The walls are a tapestry of withering flesh and an infernal blanket of heat suffocates your senses. Ash congregates beneath your fingernails and smoke shrouds your vision. You cough and wheeze, arms outstretched, searching helplessly for a way out. But just when you feel all is lost, and you will succumb to the void, something stirs before you. The shape of a man, adorned in various silks from the Urban Outfitters, pierces the clandestine veil. You grow hopeful in his presence. You begin to wonder if this lone fashionable shepherd is your gateway to salvation. He draws near, barely visible, and you sense the blank canvass of his face right beside yours. You're gripped by terror, and quickly realize this is no deliverance, but rather a damnation. The shape discharges an ear-shattering wail, peeling back the frail confines of the world and sending you reeling into oblivion. It's clear now that the true nightmare has only just begun, and Knocked Loose LP "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" is where the true horrors dwell.
Knocked Loose is a five-piece hardcore band from Oldham County, Kentucky. Since their formation in 2013, they've ostensibly been delivering a bludgeoning sonic onslaught with considerably more panache than their many contemporaries. They've surged in popularity, and while I find that phenomenon somewhat bewildering, I cannot begrudge their success. The listener market is clearly there. Unfortunately, the qualities that endear Knocked Loose for many, simply don't reach for me, and this latest indulgence is no different.
Let's start with this album's cardinal issue: songwriting. In essence, "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" feels more like an eclectic mishmash of undercooked ideas than a cohesive work. Formulaic hardcore tropes abound, the band pulls no punches in heaviness, but virtually every engaging moment is stonewalled by an abrupt pause or a generic, predictable breakdown. You'll find more awkward stops-and-starts here than the New York metro, and more chugging than a Chico State fraternity house. The album lacks dynamics and Knocked Loose offer very little reprieve from the disjointed redundancy. The tracks blur together through every gratuitous vocal break, dissonant chromatic foray, and inevitable breakdown.
What makes it all so frustrating is the band clearly has the technical ability and creative vision to craft compelling music. Take "The Calm That Keeps You Awake" for example. The track opens with an eerie, hypnotic riff and some highly unusual rhythm arrangements as it weaves through your ears like a twisted serpent. You wonder if this track will deviate from the formula, only to once again be disappointed as they fall back into fragmentation and more monotonous chugging. This is just one among many tragedies of squandered potential, of which the album is teeming.
The record also suffers from a glaring vocal issue. I understand this is highly subjective, but it's impossible to ignore the sheer grating nuisance of the voicework here. Bryan's shrill wails completely clash with the low-end instrumentation and quickly induce feelings of headache. They sound like a mentally unstable teenage girl going apoplectic over Pinkberry running out of Lava Swirl. The listening experience teeters between downright unpleasant and simply uninteresting, with neither Poppy nor Chris Motionless able to make a considerable difference. Poppy sounds exactly like Bryan, adding nothing noteworthy to her track, and Chris is used much too sparingly. Although the low vocals mesh better with the music, and guitarist Isaac injects some occasional nuance, the overall approach just doesn't work.
While "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" has glaring issues, there are some notable strengths as well. While the songs themselves are quite boring, the monumental production elevates them as much as possible. The snare is raw and explosive, the guitar tone is full of lush crunch, and everything is mixed to perfection. "Sit & Mourn", my favorite track on the record, has a ton of compelling post-production detail and has plenty of space for us to appreciate it. Drew Fulk did a phenomenal job and it certainly shows. The drum performance is also excellent, with Kevin regularly dropping hammers on the snare and bringing some creative tom work to tracks like "Take Me Home" and "The Calm That Keeps You Awake". Lastly, I appreciate the simple brevity. The band knows their style is best served small, and clocking in under 30 minutes, this album doesn't waste a single second.
At the end of the day, "You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To" is a notably sub-par modern hardcore album with obnoxious vocals and highly generic songs. It's an inch-deep ocean concealed by the guise of immaculate production and shallow catharsis. There are no catchy guitar riffs, no memorable vocal lines, and no stylistic innovations whatsoever. It's a nightmare to endure and, by my definition, simply not very good. Thank you for reading.
