The new Balmora record sucks. Even if we set aside the insane sudden implosion of the group following its release, the fact remains that the album sucks. It’s hard to think of another recent record by a popular hardcore band that was so universally panned by a fanbase who had previously held this group in very high esteem. In terms of hype, Balmora had all the markers of what seems like a successful band. People went nuts for them at shows. They were getting opening slots for tours with Poison the Well and Converge, and Fleshwater and Chat Pile. When I saw them at a metal fest in the midst of a North American tour they were on, they had already sold out of merch with several dates on the tour left to be played. So what had happened that caused them to run out of steam in such dramatic fashion?
It is my belief, and it seems to be the general consensus, that Balmora’s debut EP is their best material. It arrived in April 2023 as a fully formed and well-executed love letter to early 2020s melodic death metal-influenced metalcore. The album art, the 5-7-8 riffs and guitar harmonies, the crunching breakdowns, and the vocals that slid back and forth between nasal snarls and br00tal gutturals, all harkened back to early aughts bands like Prayer for Cleansing, Heartscarved, A Thousand Falling Skies, and Avenged Sevenfold’s first LP. For the uncs, it felt nostalgic. For the kids, it felt novel in that it was a departure from other trends in hardcore, even if it wasn’t a new one. Still, what mattered most to the band’s success, aside from their advantageous location in the North Eastern part of the United States, was that the songs were really good.
Balmora was not the only band to emerge in the early 2020s with the mission statement of reviving early 2000s melodic metalcore, but they became the most popular and visible act. Other bands on the Ephyra label such as Azhara, xNOMADx, and Since My Beloved were doing a similar thing. So too were several bands on The Coming Strife’s roster, such as Memento and A Mourning Star. All of these groups released demos/EPs to considerable acclaim, but either broke up out before they could release a full length record or have yet to do so. Through the midpart of the decade other buzzy melocore revival bands would form and release their debuts, such as Cross My Heart, Withpaperwings, or heavenscoldhands to name a few.
Like a few other melodic metalcore revivalists, Balmora looked to up the ante on their mosh parts with contrived incorporations of deathcore influences that would make their material worse. For this reason, I wasn’t really digging the band’s Prologue EP released last year. I thought it was either a brief misstep or a sign that maybe they were running out of juice.The subsequent album proved it was the latter. The LP is a hodge podge mess of riff and breakdown salad. The songs aren’t memorable. At 45 minutes, with numerous interludes sprinkled throughout, it is too long and feels longer. It stays in the same gear throughout, lacking the energy and rise and fall in tension to keep one engaged throughout a tracklist. Moreover, they turned the dial too far towards metal and far away from hardcore. There are few elements of the punk energy and rawness that metalcore needs to have some kind of visceral emotional impact. It’s overcalculated, contrived, and lacking in originality or charisma.
One of the challenges with 2000s metalcore revivalism is that the influences that many bands pull from are too narrow to allow for much differentiation between them and their contemporaries. This shit has been done and done again. You can only get out of this trap by writing exceptionally good songs or incorporating some different influences to make things fresh. Balmora did neither of these things on the new record, and so it’s no surprise their material got stale.
What sometimes goes underacknowledged is that the touchstone records that define a sound of a certain era, such as melodic metalcore in the early 2000s, are/were exciting because they represented an evolution from pre-existing forms. The relative novelty of reviving some established aesthetic runs out faster than trying to do something timely or forward thinking. You sound a lot like someone else, and people might like you for that. But they might also get bored of you much sooner too. Balmora ran out of good songs and ran out of good will because they had painted themselves into a corner.
I don’t think melodic metalcore as a whole is washed. I liked the Cross My Heart EP from last year because it avoided the trappings of deathcorifying the mosh parts, put forward strong songwriting, and had a sense of melody not as cloying as the cheese of mid 00s Ticketmaster emo-pop and poser metal that an unfortunate amount of revival bands can’t resist the pull of. Fourwindsaway is another really promising band who stand out because their melodic sensibilities seem not to be influenced by other melodic metalcore groups but instead by the post-hardcore sensibilities of Poison the Well or the alt-metal of Deftones, whose “Be Quiet and Drive” they have covered at shows. It feels reductive to call Fourwindsaway a melodic metalcore band - I think they have as much of an appeal to fans of emo-influenced metalcore groups like Skycamefalling or 7 Angels 7 Plagues as they do to those who just want a moshier At The Gates. Fourwindsaway proves there’s potential for the riffing and aesthetic that defines the melodic metalcore sound to be recontextualized and merged with other influences to make for more interesting music.
I wonder if the reception to the Balmora album will make some people think twice when writing material for upcoming releases. Slapping together harmonized 5, 7,8 riffs in between br00tal deathcore/beatdown mosh parts, and adding a hot topic-ass sung chorus here and there is feeling kinda played out. What I would really hope for though is that people realize that there is an expiry date on exercises in nostalgia. The hardcore that feels timeless is the stuff that attempts to push things forward and/or respond to the current political or cultural moment, rather than turn the clock back to a time that came and went.
June 10, 2026