Photo by Kara Aguilera

Artist: Knumears, the trio of guitarist and vocalist Matthew Cole, bassist and vocalist Dante Garcia II, and drummer Frankie Lopez

Location: Los Angeles, CA

Buzz: Screamo is quite literally the scream into the void that will never die, even when it goes through periods of being buried far underground. Yet, it’s almost as if these times demand that it be more vital to the hardcore lifeblood than ever. The world is on absolute fire and the culture is cooked. We need music to burn with us so that we’re reminded of what it is to feel something more than numbness and apathy.

We’re in the midst of a resurgence in this emotive catharsis on a collision course with the violent climaxes within and around us — see recent Buzz Sounds febuary, I Promised The World, and Holder for proof positive of that. The Los Angeles trio Knumears were raised on impassioned hardcore where brandishing every beating heart and bursting vessel was the only way to get through this life, and there’s even more visible self-deconstructions left to explore when you turn into the Directions of the band’s debut full-length.

Formed in 2021 from the remnants of a lower fidelity incarnation called Turn Away, they’ve self-taught themselves to survey internal combustion poetically over a scorched earth of serrated guitars, fast-calculating drums, and an onslaught of brutalist breakdowns. An underlying veil of melodicism boils deep into the core just as it did for torchbearing bands from the scene’s past like pg. 99 and Jerome’s Dream as well as the Jack Shirley-produced lot of Touché Amoré, Deafheaven, and Gouge Away. Shirley, it should be noted, was behind the board of Directions, and adorns Knumears’ conflagration with crackle and billowing hisses that char the listen’s raw, DIY impressionism.

As with every generation indebted to screamo’s origins, however, the gravitas of hyper-aggressive emotions hits their respective timeline in a way that refracts the moment. Songs like “One Light, Sunshine” and “Fade Away” (featuring Jeff Smith of the aforementioned Jerome’s Dream) are deceptive in their titles, as there’s only punishing heaviness to be found here, though “Breaking Ground” and its tolling interlude “Directions” are apt in reframing the shape of skramz moving forward through dramatic theatrics that hinge upon a sound ready for mass reappraisal. “You’re a burning flame / Don’t ever fade!,” they shout in anthem on closer, “The North”. Right now, the future is alit for them, even as everything else in this world turns to ash.

Sound: Me and you screaming until our ears are numb.

Recommended: “One Light, Sunshine”, “Breaking Ground”, and “The North” from their newly-released debut album, Directions

Knumears’ Directions is available now on Summer Shade / Run for Cover Records.