If you haven’t heard PLAYYTIME‘s new Deadman Tapes EP then you need to hear it now. What do you call music that crushingly heavy, brutally dense, and confrontationally melodic all at the same time? I was gonna call it grungecore, but then with some quick Googling I realized that’s just another lame TikTok aesthetic that has zero connection to the musical or cultural movement that spawned it. But I hear the grunge in this EP, its pessimistic tones and melancholic melodies, all underpinned with the savage hardcore I already know they can deliver, and some staticky and sharp industrial electronics woven throughout. On “Game Ft. Asi Kemera” there’s a shoegaze-wall-of-sound-riffs-meet-beatdown-hardcore-riffs vibe that I love, and to me it shows that this band is pushing through genre boundaries to take their sound to the next level. The vocals are definitely not clean but through the guttural screams they’re melodic and harmonized. Deadman Tapes EP is out now via Rope Bridge Records and you can get it here. Their east coast tour starts in September and you can check the date below — PLAYYTIME live is not to be missed!
