It turns out life under the gun isn’t just a witty debut album title that will catapult your band from being DIY hardcore scene darlings to getting big enough to get that Taco Bell bag while being booked to play Coachella. A huge self-fulfilling prophecy to shoulder with from there on out it has become for Militarie Gun, who find themselves thousands of miles away from the days of being a budding pandemic side-project of frontman Ian Shelton, as they’ve since overshadowed his powerviolence band Regional Justice Center in the mainstream cultural sense of it all.

Fame it is. Fortune? Well, the industry is still fucked. Yet, even so, let’s not give all of the credit to TURNSTILE for everything good that’s happened to every band in the scene since their own breakthrough — Life Under The Gun came armed with some serious pop-minded singles like it “Do It Faster” and “Very High” that leveled up the full-fledged band effort from Shelton and company into being one that knew what it wanted to be: an alternative to just hardcore fest participation that could maybe one day give them their own headlining tour on bigger stages and bigger font sizes on festival posters.

Chronic touring and indeed doing it faster as well as gruelingly harder can eventually do a number on your health, however, and so Shelton lost his longtime edge and turned to liquid courage as his vice of choice to power through the long, stressful days. He fell apart in the process, and like many rock bottom cases, he and Militarie Gun have found God — just not that one — on their sophomore effort that puts full faith behind their fuck-ups and exploits trauma for the sake of achieving bigger, sweeter-sounding, and smarter hardcore-informed alt-rock anthems that hopefully will make the pain worth the effort when the bell tolls their name.

For all intents and purposes, the role of God here is played by co-producer Riley MacIntyre, who brings to the table a body of work shellacking high-end gloss on albums for Adele and Mumford & Sons. With Militarie Gun, he helps make every song on the 14-track human lowlight reel sound massive without removing the emotive element from the equation. Though the radio barely exists these days to turn these into monoculture hits, rest assure that the synth-punk cheerleader destruction of “B A D I D E A” or the way that chorus splatters at just the right moment on “Fill Me With Paint” are enough to reach even the furthest person in the back of the room (or festival stage or, if there’s true justice in this universal chaos, an arena.)

Shelton’s self-deprecation, public apologies, paranoid insecurities, and also calling out the cult pipeline b.s. of that which sure as hell won’t help while doing the work of processing every feeling in-between of understanding the way he his needs a lot of room. With that, the Gun’s sound is expanding well beyond those imaginary boundaries people always like to talk about whenever they’re considering music made by a band with hardcore scene ties. Original guitarist William Acuña alongside “new” additions in guitarist Kevin Kiley, bassist Waylon Trim, and drummer David Stalsworth helped stabilize the band’s latest environment, and alongside some assists an the harmony front from dazy dude James Goodson as well as songwriter Phillip Odom and MS PAINT’s Nick Panella providing some creative opines, that’s how you get some of Militarie Gun’s strongest jams to date that can kick you in the face one moment (“Kick”) and convince you to wave your hands while drowning the next (“I Thought You Were Waving”).

Now put God — again, that role played by co-producer McIntyre — into the mix on top of it, and you get rock-solid reinforced melodic hardcore and punk-pop that deviates from the same ol’ through fired up distortion-accented surf guitars (“Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down”), beaming synthesizers lacking benevolence (“God Owes Me Money”), and can even wallow righteously under the heavy emo weight whether the grey weather calls for an acoustic ballad (“Daydream”) or a loveless crashout (“Wake Up and Smile”.) It’s a listen defined by a resilience to save yourself in a world that would rather see you flop, as Shelton and company turn the stumbles into reasons to switch up the rules. “If you want to keep your life, gotta let it go,” he sings in the final moments of the album’s closer and title track. This is what rock music sounds like when the higher power of self-belief has you going for broke since you’ve nothing left to lose.

Highlights: “Fill Me With Paint”, “God Owes Me Money”, “Kick”

Militarie Gun’s God Save The Gun is out now on Loma Vista Recordings.

Buy | Stream