We have arrived at a transitional point within the hardcore scene where one half of it is doing its damnedest to push the genre beyond conventional limits by bending listener beyond familiarities, and then there’s this whole other side of the dime who are reigniting a new found interest in generating a fully engulfed, heavy artillery in its energy. JIVEBOMB’s ascent aims to hit both right in the middle of it all with their debut full-length, ETHEREAL.

What a contradiction in title it seems to be on its surface, but all too fitting of a sensation once you live through it. Being mowed over by the Baltimore band in just under 20 minutes, they’ve cracked a difficult-to-decode style that mediates both of hardcore’s current directional limbs in their 10-track tear-up. What is melodious is also cranked extra fast while its riffs, bone-crunching yet clean in their detail as bass lines and distortions of found sounds wave alongside hypnotic through the cerebrum, bounce then stick to every corner of the pit. The feeling it renders is an obscured form of euphoria where that coincides with exorcising what eats away at the self — be it by the self’s own doing or oppressing societal forces — with primal rage.

At its core is vocalist Kat Madeira, digging deeper into her emotive signature of a tough-as-nails grate in growling to expel what’s unwanted within the mind and body throughout the listen, serrating through the heaviest energy and immolating like a phoenix attempt. “Disfigured identity / My permanent impact for all to see / New day of yours / Final for mine,” she declares in the album’s final moments, right before everything decomposes into nothing. Don’t assume the world has extinguished her spirit, however. She’s simply transcended to a new plane of being…

Highlights: “Estrela”, “Charm”, “Disfigured Identity”

JIVEBOMB’s ETHEREAL is available now on Flatspot Records.