KNOCKED LOOSE – You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To

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• Bands:
  KNOCKED LOOSE
• Duration: 00:27:12
• Available from: 10/05/2024
• Label:

• Pure Noise Records

Streaming not yet available

As proud supporters of the underground at various levels of scale and proportion, we often wonder how great it would be if everyone – or at least a large portion of 'normal' people – listened to extreme music.
Sometimes, paradoxically, we can witness a tear in the logic of the mainstream where bands who easy listening they have little to nothing and manage to have a disruptive, disproportionate, frankly inexplicable success: thus a hardcore/metalcore band like Knocked Loose, between the second and third studio album, was the real embodiment of this hypothesis, accessing reserved mechanisms to pop stars such as viral pieces on Tik Tok, memes, the performance at Coachella and the support of giants like Billie Eilish and Demi Lovato.
It is in this unlikely alignment of planets that we would expect a turn towards more palatable and digestible formulas, to cling to and exploit the incredible flirtation with the mainstream, as the featurings with Poppy seem to suggest – one of the most striking projects that attempts to merge pop and metal precisely – and Motionless In White, standard bearers of chart-topping alternative metalcore.
“You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To”, in defiance of all these assumptions, is instead a punitive, destructive, heavy record as all the group's fans want: this is suggested by the exhausting incipit of “Thirst”, which focuses specifically on extremism and speed, like the pachydermal “Piece By Piece” with its roars that stand in the way of Brian Garris' borderline annoying screeches.
It is arriving at “Suffocate”, with the queen Poppy, that any idea of ​​superficiality is erased: Moriah Rose Pereira further raises the pitch for an extreme and very shouty verse, whispers briefly into the microphone and throws the listener into panic due to a crazy breakdown which plays with a reggaeton beat and the snare drum of “St.Anger”.
Although Knocked Loose haven't invented anything and aren't even exactly hardcore, it's clear that in these nine songs there is more inspiration and creativity than the competition manages to bring to the table, ranging from extreme and anxiety-inducing riffs that abuse panic chords and they briefly wink at nu metal, exploiting the industrial influences of Candy and Harm's Way but at the same time inserting hooks, choruses, crescendos and vocal breaks.
KL know their strengths and make the most of them, the fans know what to expect but every time the band manages to deliver an unexpected, ignorant, wonderful extra. So also “Slaughterhouse part.2”, a song that reciprocates Garris's guest appearance on the Motionless In White album, is transported into the ruthless universe of the Kentucky quintet, pulverizing the radio appeal with a “blegh“.
Further expanding the emotional range in the footsteps of the excellent “A Tear In The Fabric Of Life” EP, this third studio album benefits from a secret weapon that has an evocative name: Drew Fulk, known as WZRD BLD, is a candidate producer at the Grammys who goes from hip hop to metal and who manages to recapture the infernal guitar tone, the punctuated and heartbreaking screams, the never so experimental drum parts with a rare definition and the 4K mastery that Zack Snyder has for the scenes of cinematic action.
Titanic, disturbing, illogical, dark, profound: “You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To” is the blockbuster that Knocked Loose had to create and have created at this delicate point in their career, in which goals are surpassed in sensational way and things become more and more disproportionate. For them, limits do not exist at the moment.