Before anything, let’s address the controversy around this album that ran rampant through online metalcore spaces for weeks leading up to release. So heinous was the act committed that it’s a wonder that Boundaries even survived through it, that, of course, being…one of the singles had a bad mix and people still can’t shut up about it. Yeah, that’s really it. Even after Skies cast amber black got reworked, the aversion to happiness and satisfaction that the usual suspects of metalcore Twitter are cursed with meant they still had to complain, because it “goes against the original vision” or some such reach.
Well, sorry to argue with people whose life consists of infighting and saying that you don’t deserve rights if you’ve ever listened to Wage War (…okay, maybe they’ve got a point with that one), but this is better. Like, by a significant amount. And that’s true of Boundaries as a whole, a band whose best represents the zenith of what modern metalcore can be. There’s a place for them among the genre’s biggest and most commercially minded, while being able to acknowledge and believe in Matthew McDougal’s assertions that “this genre is supposed to be threatening”.
Yearning: the unbeautiful after, then, finds itself coming from the exact sort of real-life devastation that would inspire such a statement. This is Boundaries’ response to the Cessna Citation II crash in May 2025 that took the lives of all six people onboard, friends of the band that, in their own words, has “had [them] in a state of perpetual mourning”. Death is by no means a new concept within the work of Boundaries, but rarely has it felt this close to home. The album reflects that so well—McDougal is a decimating presence behind the mic as it is, now imbued with extra purpose that causes the intensity to spike. Almost always, whenever this album feels big, there’s a calamitousness that directly underscores it.
Nowhere does that feel more apparent than in the clean vocal contributions from Tim Sullivan. Yearning… might be the best example to date of how Boundaries integrate singing and melody into a package that, on paper, should reject any of it. A big, soaring break feels like the easiest way imaginable to dilute your tar-thick bereavement. And yet, at no point does that actually happen. It’s hard to qualify it—often, it really is “it just works that way”—but the results are plain to see. Just look at The leper’s bell, where Sullivan pulls an impressive double duty between the annihilating drum tone, and a sky-high bridge that doesn’t suck the air out of everything else. Even Only endless swiftly pulls through to not end up like the We Came As Romans song its intro is reminiscent of.
It’s an interesting tightrope that Boundaries walk, mostly because it gives the impression that they do believe they belong among the poppier metalcore and Octanecore crowds. The two guest spots on Yearning… are filled by Make Them Suffer and Landon Tewers of The Plot In You, acts that seem in different galaxies of sonic intensity to Boundaries. There’s no disconnect, though; even Boundaries at their heaviest can accommodate for them. It’s also where McDougal’s earlier statement holds the most water, in that rubbing shoulders with acts like that only feels like a boon to Boundaries. It gives them the chance to push past perceived roadblocks and head into darker, grimmer territory. Crowned and crucified is a perfect example—Tewers’ feature doesn’t preclude its mix-disrupting breakdown, or the eerie, whining vocal sample at the end that carries the feel of analog horror.
Even at their base level, what Boundaries are producing is so much more captivating than most in their lane. It’s bludgeoning and genuine, keeping the rawness of its core intact despite how big it gets. The fact that this decently-long album never runs out of steam, too, should say plenty about how well their tactics work. Overall, then, Yearning… feels like another high bar cleared for Boundaries, making it look easy to do so. It’s no wonder that, despite the overall insufferability of their contributors, those online communities do seem quite enthusiastic about this one. A broken clock, and all that.
For fans of: Gideon, Varials, Like Moths To Flames
‘Yearning: the unbeautiful after’ by Boundaries is released on 17th July on Sumerian Records.
Words by Luke Nuttall
