Band:	Knocked Loose
Album:	You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To
Style:	Hardcore, Metalcore
Release date:	May 10, 2024
A review by:	RaduP

01. Thirst
02. Piece By Piece
03. Suffocate [feat: Poppy]
04. Don't Reach For Me
05. Moss Covers All
06. Take Me Home
07. Slaughterhouse 2 [feat: Chris Motionless]
08. The Calm That Keeps You Awake
09. Blinding Faith
10. Sit And Mourn

...after breakdown after breakdown after breakdown...

I think it's really funny to compare how much praise this album is getting in a lot of circles, some more metal than others, compared to the very lukewarm reception it got here. I mean it's not like Metal Storm was ever specifically kind to the core side of things, but we're far from the worst gatekeepers and we've thrown praise where it was due multiple times. I am doing my best not to let the album's reception get to me in any way, from neither direction, and I'm tackling it now that the hype died down a bit. I do appreciate however a hardcore band like this getting to this level of popularity by making their music as viscious and as populated with the one of the genre's defining features as possible as opposed to making it more accessible or experimental.

In my review of A Different Shade Of Blue I already expressed my dissatisfaction with the overabundance of breakdowns and how each one lessened the impact of each forthcoming one. That's not something that changed with You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To, and it's still my main gripe with it (and something I see being an issue with a lot of people). However, there are two things that work in the album's favor. On one side, it is shorter than half an hour in runtime, meaning that even with any perceived lack of dynamics, it at least has the decency not to overstay its welcome. On the other hand, I feel like the breakdowns themselves are more interesting this time around. Case in point my first taste of the record was "Suffocate" featuring Poppy, which benefits not only from having some extra dynamics on the vocal front, but has a breakdown bridge that's so unconventionally sounding it almost sounds like a Reggaeton beat metalcorized. In no world should that work, but it does.

I don't think the rest of the record reaches the heights of "Suffocate", and with that being so early in the record it does kinda make the rest of the album feel like it has to live up to it and accentuating that breakdown saturation issue. What also works in the album's favor is how the production seems to push the envelope a bit in terms of how heavy and pristine this kind of sound can get, something that also works to bring out some of the ways the albums injects extra dynamics. On the vocal front, other than the two guest vocalists, the high-pitched screams are quite specific to Knocked Loose. You might also remember from the aforementioned review that I said I wish I could see them live to see how the impact would sustain. Well, I saw them live, and even if that was some of the wildest crowd-band energy exchange of that festival, it also kinda ruined the vocals from me because I didn't expect them to sound that woodpecker-like in the flesh, and that's something that's getting hard to unhear now.

Just for once I'd like to hear a complete Knocked Loose song that relies on riffs rather than breakdowns.