Common Wounds‘ debut full-length album is here and ready to deliver some punches to the gut through its tense riffs and genuine anger.
Release date: October 18, 2024 | Protagonist Music | Facebook
Post-hardcore is one of those kinda trendy genres at the moment, and not the newest genre either, so it could be easy to assume that everything worth listening to in this style has already been released. I only really got into it quite recently, around the time Turnstile released GLOW ON, and have since then become quite fond of it, even though I haven’t yet delved super deep. I really dig the combination of metalcore, hardcore punk, and noise rock, and I particularly like it if it’s a little dreary. The debut album from Arizona’s Common Wounds, All Night Blood, ticks all of these boxes, and then some.
The album opener, “Cognition”, starts gently, with a soft bend almost reminiscent of Chris Isaak’s “Wicked Game”. Very quickly, though, it gives way to a Mastodon-meets-Converge verse, featuring a sweet yet spooky arpeggiated guitar line and half-barked vocals. The production is grim, but not grimy – a dark filter seems to hang over a sonic image that is so very clear. Even though the song is reasonably slow and doomy, the intensity of it is not lost, even for a second. The chorus opens into a driving drum pattern and almost loosely-strummed chords. If I close my eyes, I can imagine being at the top of a hill in a wintery dusk, looking out onto a fog-covered lake, a snippy breeze biting my face as my clothes weigh down, heavy with water. This is the kind of image I’d generally associate with black metal, but there’s none of the heart-wrenching acute agony, more a dull, throbbing anguish, a punch to the gut.
One of the things I enjoy most on All Night Blood is the chorus of “Broken Hands”. The whole song is slightly off-kilter, thick, and again very Converge, but the chorus is much more melodic and catchy. It’s very punctuated, the lyrics delivered syllable by syllable, almost jostling for space among the thunderous bass and rhythm guitar, incessant drums, and brighter (but no less dirgy) lead guitar. I also just absolutely love the bridge – it’s understated, but still intense, and features only one line, ‘now it ends’. The song concludes without bravado, but also with a feeling of completion. While it’s one of the shortest tracks on All Night Blood, it’s still definitely one of my favourites. From the first time I heard “Broken Hands”, it seemed strangely familiar, like a long-faded memory buried in the back of my brain, the festering sense of a time loved and lost, and even after many listens, I can’t put my finger on what it reminds me of. And, you know what, I’m kind of glad for that – this lack of resolution on a personal level.
A lot of the tracks on All Night Blood have similarities – structurally, they’re often reasonably uniform, as well as tonally and rhythmically (in the sense that they often feature odd time signatures or strange rhythmic groupings). And yet, they all stand as distinct musical moments that I have no trouble at all telling apart. It might be something as subtle as the background strings near the end of “Vainglory”, or something more obvious like the doom-worshipping main riff of the title track or the almost post-punk harmony in the chorus of “Mile Marker”, but every single song on this album has something that makes it totally unique.
Speaking of “Mile Marker” – what a tune. Maybe I’m just a sucker for the shorter songs at the moment, but I really love this track. At just over two and a half minutes long, it’s the shortest on the album, but it certainly doesn’t feel like it. There are enough ideas and sections here for a song at least double the length, and yet I’m pleased that Common Wounds decided to keep it concise. Every single riff, every moment, is loaded with an electric tension. It’s a blister just beneath the surface of the skin, ready to burst. It’s an itch you can never scratch hard enough to satisfy. It’s not comfortable, and nor is it meant to be. It prickles, it tingles all over with some sort of static energy. It makes me feel alive.
Another absolute banger of a track is “So It Goes”. Nestled right near the end of the album, it still packs just as much of a punch as its earlier comrades. Starting with a simple strummed line featuring a quasi-melody played over resonating open strings and a subtle synth pad, it’s no less tense despite being a slower tempo and arguably a slightly less intense nature. The tone is still thick and dark, the guitars are played with trademark semi-sloppy humanity, and the drums still throb with vital intensity. It’s a simple song, and yet something about its simplicity feels special to me.
At almost six minutes long, the final track on All Night Blood, “The Diplomat”, is also the most different. It’s almost post-rocky, the vocals largely spoken rather than screamed. The guitars swim in heavy delay, the bass is almost clean, and the drums meditative rather than driving and assertive. Something about the vocal delivery in its chorus reminds me of Isis; it just ebbs and flows, drifts. Even when the song changes mood with the introduction of distortion and harsh vocals, it doesn’t feel explicitly angry, more like a festering, brooding meditation. In its final moment, the song folds in on itself, sizzling to a crisp in a wash of fuzz, hum, and squealing noise; a dramatic non-ending for such an intense album.
Writing this review, I want, more than ever, to talk about every single track on All Night Blood, because, for one, they all totally deserve it, but also because I adore them all so much. The album isn’t groundbreaking or genre-defying – it’s just damn good post-hardcore. And, like the best albums in that genre, what makes it so good is that it’s so genuine. Common Wounds aren’t trying to be anything they’re not. It very much feels like they’re just writing what they know, what they see, what they feel, and what they would want to listen to themselves, and I’m here for it.
