Metallic hardcore band Nails released an expanded 10th anniversary edition of their 2010 debut LP Unsilent Death on Southern Lord last week, and since then it was revealed that drummer Taylor Young and bassist John Gianelli left the band.

However, Nails frontman Todd Jones — the only remaining original member — is moving forward and working on Nails’ fourth album, Lambgoat reports. Todd says:

Nails is simply what people in the music industry refer to as ‘off cycle’ and I believe it’s healthy for bands to… go away, for lack of better term, and return when they have something relevant to say, which in Nails case, would be new music as we haven’t released anything in a few years. With that being said, John and Taylor are not in Nails anymore and it seems like a good time to let you know that. As people have been inquiring, the next point to address is the future of Nails. This change happened months ago, so I’ve had time to get things together, work on our 4th album, and find musicians to play with. When we are ready to announce that info, we will let you know. John and Taylor without a doubt made their mark on Nails, which is beyond measure and personally I will always cherish the experiences and music we shared together.

Stay tuned for more.

Previously, Taylor Young said:

The band and I parted ways this past spring, and I played my final show with the band last December. I’ll always be a tyrant; the band will always be a massive part of me, and I hope it keeps going. If anybody has an inkling of a feeling that Nails can’t make good music without me, that’s simply not true as Todd’s [Jones] attention to detail, and quality control is unmatched. It was a wild decade with Todd, John, Saba, Leon and others and I wouldn’t trade it for anything. However, I cannot update you on the status of the band so no more questions about it please.

And John Gianelli later added, “to all my fans across the world that have been wondering, I parted ways too. #classiclineup”

Stream the 10th anniversary edition of Unsilent Death:

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Recent Hardcore/Metalcore Album Reviews

Chamber – Cost of Sacrifice

The past few years have seen an increasingly growing wave of bands injecting new life into metalcore, including Code Orange, Knocked Loose, Vein, SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Sanction, Year of the Knife, and others, and if you like those bands, you should definitely be turning your attention towards Chamber if you haven't already. Like a bunch of those aforementioned names, they're signed to Pure Noise, who inked a deal with them in 2019 and then released the Ripping / Pulling / Tearing compilation, which comprised their two previous EPs and one new song. As good as all the material on that comp is, their just-released debut full-length Cost of Sacrifice is even better. Like some of their other modern metalcore peers, Chamber have figured out how to tap into the thrills of turn-of-the-millennium metalcore while eschewing the cringier moments that came with the genre's mainstream success in the 2000s, and they incorporate other sounds from that era too. Throughout Cost of Sacrifice, you can hear Botch/Converge-style mathcore, Deftones' atmopshere, Slipknot's chaos, and the well-polished accessibility of 2000s metalcore (producer Randy LeBoeuf knows exactly what he's doing), but Chamber take this palette of 20-25 year old sounds and totally reinvent them. They induce nostalgia while simultaneously feeling like a fresh new band, and sometimes that's how the best new music is created -- a little familiarity to draw you in, and exciting new sounds to keep you coming back.

Year of the Knife – Internal Incarceration

Pure Noise Records has been on a roll lately, and one of their most promising new signings is Delaware metallic hardcore crew Year of the Knife. They were supposed to open the Code Orange tour this year, and if you like when that band was more of a straight-up hardcore/metalcore band, you're almost definitely gonna like this too. It's got razor-sharp production by Converge's Kurt Ballou, and it's just rager after rager. It's a blast to listen to and it sounds like it'd be even more of a blast to be in the pit for these songs at the tour that never happened, but it's also a very dark record. The lyrics tackle addiction and loss, and the gloomy tone of the music follows suit.

Sharptooth – Transitional Forms

Baltimore's Sharptooth made a name for themselves as one of the brightest new voices in political hardcore with their 2017 debut LP Clever Girl (which, among other things, includes a rager called "Fuck You Donald Trump"), and they're now back with their followup Transitional Forms, which is bigger and better in every way. The band now sounds tighter and heavier and more varied, the production is crisper (this one was produced and mixed by Brian McTernan, Paul Leavitt, and Sharptooth guitarist Lance Donati), and the anger that fuels these songs is even more palpable than it was on Sharptooth's debut. As powerhouse screamer/singer Lauren Kashan puts it, the album tells the "story of my personal struggle with the societal, interpersonal, and internal constructs that have left me feeling small, afraid, broken, and utterly hopeless," and you hear how all of that informs the incisive lyricism on this LP.

Compared to Clever Girl, Sharptooth push their sound to new extremes in a handful of new directions. The nu-ish chugs of "Say Nothing (In The Absence of Content)" find Sharptooth at their heaviest, "Life On The Razor's Edge" finds them at their most atmospheric, and at least a couple songs find them upping the melodicism in interesting ways. "The Gray" belongs in the same lineage of melodic hardcore as bands like Modern Life Is War and Comeback Kid, while "153" sounds like a fresh update on the metalcore-tinged hard rock of mid 2000s Every Time Die, and "Evolution" gets a dash of melodic punk from Anti-Flag frontman Justin Sane's guest spot. The variety of the album keeps you on your toes, while the pure rage and adrenaline that fuels these songs keeps your blood rushing.

Code Orange – Underneath

Underneath is the most accessible album Code Orange released yet, and it's one of their gnarliest and most experimental. There are parts that can sound like Slipknot or even Linkin Park, but much more so than "Bleeding In The Blur," Underneath obscures the clean-sung hooks or blends them with some of the most desolate, gruesome sounds Code Orange have made to date. It's Code Orange's most direct foray into industrial music, and it features programming by Chris Vrenna, who was in Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson's band, and the influence of those artists is not hard to spot at all (though programming was also handled by Code Orange's own Eric “Shade” Balderose, who also recently created the visualizer for Mike Shinoda of Linkin Park's remix of a Foxing song, but I digress). With that industrial influence, they're constantly toying with and manipulating all the sounds that the band first created live. One second you're banging your head to some vicious metalcore, and then twitchy, glitchy electronics start fucking with the song mid-verse. Read our full review here.

Gulch – Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress

The Santa Cruz/San Jose hardcore scene is thriving right now, thanks to killer bands like Drain, Hands of God, Sunami, and Gulch, all of whom share members and/or frequently gig together, and the latest must-hear release to come out of that scene is Gulch's Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress. Casually blurring the lines between punk, thrash, and metalcore, Impenetrable Cerebral Fortress is rager after rager, with eight songs, six of which are under two minutes. Not until the closing song -- a cover of Siouxsie and the Banshees' "Sin In My Heart" that Gulch turn into a brooding, three-and-a-half minute fusion of indie, sludge, and screamo -- do Gulch even consider slowing down. Other than that song, this record is purely whiplash-inducing, and vocalist Elliot Morrow sounds like he swallowed knives before recording. There's been a lot of punk/metal crossover in this realm lately, but don't let this record get lost in the shuffle. It's too purely vicious to be ignored.

Drain – California Cursed

Santa Cruz hardcore band Drain's first full-length album California Cursed (out on the legendary Revelation Records) packs Metallica/Slayer licks and Pantera/Exhorder grooves into its 10-song, 22-minute running time, but it doesn't do the band any justice to pigeonhole them into "crossover thrash." This isn't your average Suicidal Tendencies and Cro-Mags worship -- which there's been a lot of in recent years. California Cursed feels fresh, like it's Drain's personal brand of hardcore injected with thrash and groove metal riffs, rather than an attempt to fit in with a predetermined style of crossover. Maybe it's the title and the cover art, but California Cursed has that classic Cali punk vibe and it adds a little warmth and brightness to the evil in the riffs. It's also a modern sounding record that takes influence from '80s guitar work but not '80s production techniques. Even if some of the sounds are familiar, every new generation needs the hardcore bands they can call their own. California Cursed sounds like a record that thousands of young hardcore kids can latch onto, and that'll induce some welcome nostalgia for longtime hardcore/thrash fans in the process.

Rotting Out – Ronin

San Pedro's Rotting Out were staples of the late 2000s / early 2010s hardcore scene, but they broke up in 2015 and, the following year, vocalist Walter Delgado served an 18-month prison sentence after pleading guilty to charges of possession of marijuana (around 700lbs of it in his vehicle). But, thankfully, Walter is a free man again, Rotting Out are an active band again, and they've got a new record that fucking rips. Not only is Walter not the type to glorify street life, he's the type to say "fuck you" to people who do, especially when they haven't actually lived it. So of course you can feel the effects of Walter doing time on this record, but in a way that's often reflective, and even more often angry. Walter's got one of those barks where he sounds pissed off no matter what the lyrics are, and it goes very well with the band's fast, in-your-face, little-to-no frills punk songs. With almost every song around or under the two-minute mark, this record whips by and sounds like a pure adrenaline rush the whole time. It doesn't sound a hell of a lot different than the album they made seven years ago, but it's hotter and crisper and the band sounds rejuvenated. And besides, when you've got a no-bullshit formula that works as well as Rotting Out's, you don't need to reinvent yourself every time.

END – Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face

I wanna try to refrain from using the term "supergroup" to describe END -- whose lineup includes vocalist Brendan Murphy (Counterparts), guitarist Will Putney (of Fit For An Autopsy and producer for Knocked Loose, Vein, Every Time I Die, and tons of other cool bands), guitarist Gregory Thomas (ex-Misery Signals, ex-Shai Hulud), bassist Jay Pepito (Reign Supreme, ex-Blacklisted), and drummer Billy Rymer (ex-The Dillinger Escape Plan) -- because even though each member in this group is obviously pretty super, I feel like it somehow takes something away. The word makes END sound like some ego-fueled, too-big-to-fail rock star side project rather than a vital hardcore band whose members just happen to also play in other vital hardcore bands, and END are very much the latter. END put out their debut EP From the Unforgiving Arms of God back in 2017, and they've spent the time since then solidifying themselves as a force of their own who stand tall next to the members' more famous projects. Splinters From An Ever-Changing Face, their first full-length, only further cements this. It's angry, in-your-face, metallic hardcore that would sound great whenever you listen to it, but which especially feels cathartic with all the anger in the air right now.

Xibalba – Años En Infierno

Now that the whole hardcore/death metal crossover thing is really on trend, here comes Xibalba with their first album in five years to remind you that they've been doing it since before it was hip and now they whip even more ass than ever. Años En Infierno (which translates to "years in hell"... yep) is the band's first album produced by Power Trip/Code Orange collaborator Arthur Rizk, and the bigger, cleaner production only makes them sound more furious. The rhythm section is a total gut punch, and Nate Rebolledo's growls have grown far more evil in the past five years. Things really suck right now, and sometimes when things suck you just want the most white-knuckling, jaw-clenching shit in the world to help release all the bad feelings you're harboring up inside, and that's exactly what Años En Infierno is.

The Acacia Strain – Slow Decay

Slow Decay a little more "typical" of The Acacia Strain than the doomy, atmospheric It Comes In Waves that they released ini very late 2019, but also if this band have proved anything over the years, it's that they're never really typical of anything and they continue to reinvent themselves. They've spent years fusing together hardcore, death metal, sludge metal, and more in increasingly interesting ways, and Slow Decay is no exception. This one features guest vocals from members of three cool newer hardcore bands (Mortality Rate's Jess Nyx, Jesus Piece's Aaron Heard, Left Behind's Zach Hatfield, plus sung vocals by Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox/Iwrestledabearonce), and Slow Decay sounds as fresh within the current hardcore scene as those bands do. It's a more forceful album than It Comes In Waves, but sometimes the atmospheric side of that album sneaks into this one too. It's a genuinely inventive take on metallic hardcore without abandoning the traits that longtime Acacia Strain fans know and love, and for a band nearly 20 years into their career, that's a pretty impressive feat.

Typecaste – Between Life EP

There are a lot of exciting things happening within hardcore and metalcore right now, and it feels like every few weeks there's a new band who threatens to rise up out of the underground and leave a wider-scale impact without softening their blow or overtly catering to non-hardcore kids. And I'm no A&R scout, but right now my money's on Typecaste being one of the next bands to make the leap. They're following their very good, self-released 2018 EP Creature of Habit with their even better third EP (and Flatspot Records debut), Between Life, and they sound like more of a force to be reckoned with on these four songs than ever. The riffs are beefier, the drumming is crazier, the production is crisper, and the band's dual vocal attack (the growly guy and the shrieky guy) is more intense and more memorable. It's a bludgeoning, no-bullshit-taking EP until the very last track, "Under the Wreath," where Typecaste show off that they can also work in melodic alternative rock without veering into cheesy territory. It's just one song, but if Typecaste have more where this came from, their future's just gonna keep looking brighter.