AMYGDALA - Our Voices Will Soar Forever (LP)

Five-piece San Antonio punk/hardcore purveyors Amygdala position themselves as part of the punk resistance tradition; they started making ferocious, caustic and outspoken hardcore together in 2014, and their new album, Our Voices Will Soar Forever, certainly pulls no punches. The band's music empowers individuals and communities and is about the non-linear progression of healing, the twisted ways abuse can linger in our psyche, and take control over the ways we navigate life. Vocalist Bianca Quinones confronts nihilism in her shrilling screams as she begins the record with a song that asks about the emptiness of life, the chaos and the tragedy. With its melodic instruments trucking alongside Quinones' powerful grasps for meaning in the violent hollowness of existence, the record encapsulates the deeply terrifying nature of living as a victim of rape and abuse. In classic Amygdala style, each song never stays in one genre, but slowly transitions from traditional melodic hardcore, to a heavier, sludgier, black-metal inspired sound to standard hardcore punk.