“We are bringing a fresh sound to an otherwise stale scene,” claim Mélancolia on this album’s press release. “You will not hear what we are doing from anyone else.” Pretty big words coming from an Australian -core band, though you have to presume they’ve got an idea what they’re talking about. The famed monotony of that whole scene is one thing, but it’s rare you’ll catch any of them as support to, say, Suffocation or Cattle Decapitation. They’re real metal bands, y’know! Even in the deathcore vein, to find that Mélancolia have been pulled up most by the likes of Ingested or Vulvodynia—names more on the brutal or slam side of things—gets some gears whirring.
You’re therefore left to give actual, serious consideration to the claims of a “fresh sound” for perhaps the first time ever. After all, of the profuse number who’ll buy into their own spin, it’s a negligible amount coming with the evidence to back it up. Pleasingly, Mélancolia do have a proven track record here. Their debut HissThroughRottenTeeth came out in 2023 and still feels like a significant shake-up to the expected ‘Aussie-core’ paradigm, thanks to Alex Hill’s vocals that owe most to black-metal in a shrieking, necrotic volatility. Considering that’s paired with what’s ostensibly nu-metal and continues to work, Mélancolia’s highfalutin claims appear to have more than a bit of truth to them.
Thus, sticking to what they know on random.access.misery is a smart move. There’s still no one else encroaching on their territory yet, meaning they still get to reap the benefits of a pretty unique sound for as long as they can manage. And outside of some nasal, ‘wacky’ yammering from DREGG’s Christopher Mackertich on SPIT! (which is half-covered by the instrumental anyway so mitigates its own issue), Mélancolia have still got it. They’re fittingly thick and punishing in their approach to metal, with the twin fronts of bleakness coming from nu-metal and extreme metal doing their best to meld. Often the former takes priority, but it’s nice to actually include blast-beats on a track like ALL_IS_RUST to show more than just paying lip service, and Cold Now…’s efforts to transition from fire-and-ice blackness to early-Slipknot turntable scratches is a fascinatingly unconventional step to play up.
But it goes without saying that, if anything about random.access.misery—and, truthfully, Mélancolia in general—will make you shoot bolt-upright, it’s Hill as a vocalist. You could almost be led to believe that the entire band was built around making him look good, as (with the exception of drummer Mason Page who delivers some terrific work) the others simply aren’t in the same league. Hill is the singular, impossible-to-ignore face of Mélancolia, and probably the reason they’ve caught the waves they have. Again, no one else in this space sounds like he does, let alone finds a way to tinker nu-metal towards working with these searing, bloody-lipped screams. The gall to try is almost its own reward.
Granted, that’s more true than you might expect, seeing as random.access.misery is more about the style than the songs. Said style is mighty impressive and covers all bases for why you’d want to listen to this, but to revisit it? There’s still a bit of work in that department, given that these aren’t the easiest materials to craft a hook from, and Hill switching to creepy nu-metal whisper or more standard, low-register scream lashes out with far less force. That was true of HissThroughRottenTeeth, too, another album thrusted by the thought experiment of how much mileage Mélancolia’s central idea has.
To be fair, that’s still quite a lot. Maybe it’s the kneejerk response from being burned by so many failed assertions of identity within heavy music, but Mélancolia actually making good on those promises makes them so much more worthwhile. And they’re almost there, too; for a series of foundations, they’re knocking it out of the park. Just get them built on and refined, and we’re really in business. As it stands now, random.access.misery is still very good, and arguably the perfect display of fearlessness that this corner of metal has been forever starved of. It’s absolutely worth the time to check out, because you already know how thrilling it’ll be when Mélancolia inevitably hit their peak.
For fans of: Lorna Shore, Vulvodynia, Decayer
‘random.access.misery’ by Mélancolia is released on 29th August on Nuclear Blast Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
