Youth Novel return with a strong collection of songs that forego chaos and intensity for melody and variety.
Release date: January 17, 2026 | Larry Records | Bandcamp | Instagram
In the volatile corner of DIY hardcore that’s known as screamo, the lifespans of musical acts tend to be short. Genre pioneers like Orchid, City of Caterpillar, and Neil Perry all burned brightly for less than five years of sweaty basement shows before calling it a day (though the former two have since reunited, and hopefully we’ll get to see the latter play more shows again in the future).
Taking that into consideration, Youth Novel could almost be considered a veteran band now – or as another short-lived band who reunited when no one was expecting them too. Starting out back in 2012 as a heavily melodic, deeply endearing screamo/emo act, the band has since gone through several incarnations, lineups and even geographical locations, culminating in the release of their first full-length, 2021’s vicious Youth Novel.
That record, while still retaining a strong melodic undercurrent, showcased a band far removed from its early emo-leaning roots, embracing a violent and suffocating sound instead – fitting in nicely with contemporary skramz heavy hitters like Frail Body and Gillian Carter.
And now, five years later, Youth Novel returns with a new record, and a new musical direction, pushing their sound in a way that both looks forward and pulls back from the band’s earlier days.
Starting out with unnerving and foreboding stabs of clean guitars, I Went Through This Experience Smiling wastes no time in pulling the listener into its uneasy orbit. Piercing synths and pained screams build up a tense, lightbulb-flickering-at-the-end-of-a-dark-corridor soundscape, before making way to the hard-hitting stomp of “Made in Heaven”.
Even a very brief encounter with the album’s first notes reveals how different it sounds from its predecessor. This time around, Youth Novel is not here to overwhelm you with a wall of sound and a songwriting approach that goes for the jugular. Instead, they walk a fine line between telling a story of anxiety, pain and depression through a wide arsenal of musical tools – the songs here hit hard, but they also breath, flex their muscles, and flow from peaks to valleys.
The one-two punch of “Mallory-Weiss” and “Mikan” encapsulates Youth Novel’s approach throughout the record, with a more grounded and less chaotic rhythmic approach, and a strong emphasis on snaking melodic guitar runs that call to mind mid 00’s melodic metalcore acts like Misery Signals and Hopesfall – not comparisons I was expecting to make before hitting play.
Those two songs also represent the main issue that bogs an otherwise strong collection of songs: a compressed and mid-heavy production that causes the record to lose much of its heft when the band really tries to hit hard and heavy. There are some parts here – like the ending of “Mikan” and the second half of “Mecha Codeine” – where you know the band is throwing down, but just feel that the blow is blunt and stunted. Those parts are likely to get any crowd going when the band plays live, but on the record, they represent a band trying to hold the stick at both ends and not always succeeding.
There are some flashes of the previous record on occasion, too. “Violence” kicks off with a classic-sounding skramz riff and drum rolls, and the aforementioned “Mecha Codeine” manages to embody all of Youth Novel’s different musical directions in one song, with flashes of At the Drive-In post-hardcore, sasscore, and emoviolence flickering through the song’s melodic screamo structure.
All in all, I Went Through This Experience Smiling represents a strong entry in the discography of one of the last decade’s most well-loved screamo bands. Fans of the band’s previous record might find themselves wishing for more violence, but Youth Novel makes up for that shift in aggression with better songwriting, a wider dynamic range, and a willingness to try out some new things, like incorporating electronics and clean vocals. And though the band still hasn’t fully mastered this new sound, they still delivered a strong, mature album that should appeal to listeners from all across the post-hardcore, emo, and screamo spectrum.
