Death Lens want to be in your ear at all times. They hide their ferocity underneath a thick veneer of style until the energy and chaos of one of their live shows leaves every audience member disarmed and forever changed. Off the strength of 2022’s No Luck, tours with Militarie Gun and Together Pangea, and the support of their hometown, Death Lens is releasing their new album, Cold World, May 3rd on Epitaph Records. For Death Lens, it’s all been building to this. Cold World is a departure from the early styles Death Lens mimicked as a young band, transmuting them into matured and brawny post-hardcore tinged rock songs. On record, Death Lens have an established habit of writing hard-nosed rock that combines West Coast reverbed-out surf punk with tight and bouncy Britrock, deceptively characterizing the band as exclusively chill and vibe-focused when live, a Death Lens show has all the energy of hardcore. Slick guitar sonics and sugary backing vocal harmonies that feel like the best parts of indie punk and shoegaze are the foundation of their style, but in a 200 capacity room, Death Lens brings the same winning concoction as Turnstile and Militarie Gun. In other words, these are the kinds of songs that become the soundtrack to enduring memories of nights of drunken, sweat-drenched singalongs.
Joyce Manor is a band who have never relied on gimmicks. Since forming in Torrance, California, in 2008, the band—vocalist/guitarist Barry Johnson, bassist Matt Ebert and guitarist Chase Knobbe—have built-up a feverish fanbase by writing catchy, pop-punk songs that seem straight-forward on the surface but teeming with carefully crafted nuances upon multiple listens. This is undoubtedly true of the band’s sixth studio album 40 oz. To Fresno, an album that has songs that span the last eight years, yet comes together to form a cohesive album that marks the next chapter of Joyce Manor. “This is an interesting record because the final track ‘Secret Sisters’ was actually a B-side from [2014’s] Never Hungover Again and ‘NBTSA’ is actually a reworked version of ‘Secret Sisters’ that barely even resembles the original song,” Johnson explains. Although Joyce Manor were planning on taking a break prior to the pandemic, Johnson soon began writing to keep boredom at bay and much of the remainder of 40 oz. To Fresno came out of that period of focused songwriting.