PHOTO CREDIT: ANDREW VAUGHAN
WRITTEN BY DYLAN WILLIAMSON
Headwreck are one of a handful of Brisbane bands making waves in 2021, mostly because we’ve only been able to have about three shows and Headwreck have opened for all of them. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed their live sets and have been waiting for a proper studio release to really give them some proper time. Their decision to misspell Glamourise in the title of their debut release does put me on the back foot and, after listening, that error foreshadows the approach taken to the whole EP. This is not a professional release from career musicians with producers arguing over tiny details. Headwreck decided to produce their own EP, and it’s because they wanted to make something that sounded exactly how they wanted it to and that carried their message.
I’m coming to Glamorise Demise with a different set of ears to any of the releases I’ve reviewed in the last couple of years. I’m a father now, which does reframe my approach to some of the themes we talk about in metalcore, and of course I haven’t been to a show since the dawn of time. Headwreck’s appearance on just about every bill this year has built a firm association with being close with people after spending months apart from them; with my first experiences going to shows sober – which I now prefer, since I can remember them and I sprain my ankles less; and with what it’s like to be with people who like abrasive, angry music like I do.
Our scene is built of a bunch of different kinds of people who all think very differently and live very different lives. The thing we share in common is our love of heavy music, and it is really love. There are very few casual metalcore fans. Glamourise Demise is, among other things, a love letter to metalcore. It doesn’t take the sharpest ear to pick up the Amity influences and the now-ubiquitous nu-metal crooning, but less obvious is the little riffs and samples that sound they’re borrowed from fifteen years ago. Headwreck have unashamedly borrowed pieces of this genre they love and used them to build the music they wanted to hear. This is what Headwreck think metalcore should sound like.
Their approach to lyrics and theme has also got a distinctly fifteen-years-ago flavour to it. Recently there’s been a tendency to shy away from explicitly discussing suicide in metalcore. This was absolutely not the case when Headwreck – and I – were growing up. Emo and screamo were genres built around discussing suicide as a central theme. Maybe it’s because of positive psychology and the understanding that happiness is really an activity that you have to work at, but metalcore has taken a strong turn towards discussing pain in terms of resilience or its temporary nature. Glamourise Demise does not do that. The name of the EP itself is a nod to the notion of romantic suicide, an idea over which the spectre of Kurt Cobain, among others, loomed during Headwreck’s early teenage years. The roster of the 27 Club grows larger and more notorious every day.
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When Headwreck misspell Glamourise in the title, it’s because this is an EP written by people who wanted to make metalcore music with their friends for their scene. They’re not interested in going viral or landing support slots for the biggest touring bands. They couldn’t be doing anything else. There’s a kind of nostalgic naivete to this approach to music. It’s what it used to be like when we were kids, listening to angry music on school buses, when the reality of making music as a living was unknown to us and we really thought Ronnie Radke wasn’t a dumpster fire of a person. It’s a deeply genuine approach to life. I personally find it endearing. It’s been said that metalcore takes itself terribly seriously sometimes, and it’s not that Glamorise Demise doesn’t take itself seriously, it’s just that Headwreck are much more interested in playing the best music they can than in writing the best release. It seems like a subtle distinction but the listening experience is worlds apart. I can’t bring myself to care about Northlane because they take the exact opposite approach to their music.
The price that Headwreck pay for this approach is that I consider this to be an unpolished release. The decision to produce your own music means that you don’t get a dissenting voice. The direction that the band wants to take never gets challenged. There is no voice of experience in the room who can tell you what’s worked for other bands or what’s being done right now that the band might like to try. I can hear that there’s a lot that’s been borrowed from what we listened to as teenagers, and a lot of what’s being released at the moment, but I don’t hear anything that’s distinctly Headwreck. If you told me this was an old Diamond Construct EP I’d believe you. Finally, the inclusion of an electronic interlude on a six track EP is unforgivable. Let it be known: interludes are never good, even less so on an EP with only five other songs. The interlude is called Respite, which makes me think it was put on here to give the listener a break from the otherwise constant screaming and heaviness – except Headwreck aren’t all that far towards the heavy end of metalcore, and such a break is entirely unnecessary. I should say I would never dare to describe this EP as rough. The production is crisp and well done.
Remember, the miss-spelling (or Americanisation, though of course they’d use a “z”) of Glamorise foreshadowed an unpolished release, and that is what we got. The attitude on this album is very much that we know what they mean – and, thanks to the authenticity of the writing and the naked love of the genre, we do. Listening to this EP brings me back to that feeling of why I care about any of this in the first place. The feeling of standing in a huge group of people, ears ringing from blast beats and some sweaty twenty-something screaming at us about a pain he was born with and has never found a way to sever. A pain that everyone standing in that room shares. For the length of a set, the burden is lifted.
Nobody has ever fallen in love with heavy music because someone used a weird time signature, or a nine string bass guitar, or because your low growl goes a half-octave deeper than the next band’s. We fall in love with this genre because it sounds like how we feel, and the people who are playing it feel that way too. It’s so important for all of us to continue to communicate authentically about the hard times we go through and the dark clouds that follow us around. Heavy music is an experiential way of doing that. You really get to feel it. Nothing else is like this. I’ve put down a hundred metalcore EPs because they were performing angst for the sake of being liked.
Glamorise Demise by Headwreck does not have this problem. I give it four stars.
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