A few months ago, we got a hint of Mat Devine's new work with Wrongchilde when we heard "Falling In Love Will Kill You," featuring Gerard Way. And of course, my original excitement over Wrongchilde centered almost entirely around the taste of new music from Gerard. I'm a ride or die emo kid, you can't take that from me.

Luckily, I got a second exposure to Wrongchilde, and had the chance to hear Gold Blooded in its entirety. Like falling slowly through icy water, the sound seeps into your veins and coats them in the grey mist that hisses above the ground before sunrise. And your arteries slowly fill with gold, and your whole body starts to glow, and the album name becomes incredibly appropriate and you get very embarrassed by your tacky metaphors no matter how accurate they are.

"Just Call Me Crash" is a standout on the album, not a violent, sudden impact, but a slow motion intoxication of sunlight hitting your skin or a wave breaking above your head. It's the crash of surf, not the crash of cars. And if the album as a whole is the ocean, then "Crash" is the current, driving the sound in churning patterns across your skin.

Gold Blooded is like having the sun rise slowly in your chest and flowers bloom down along your arms... like having the ocean spray your feet and mist curl around your ankles. Listen and let the world open up inside of you.

The last (and long, long, long awaited) of the "my mother lived here before moving to the east coast" trilogy is coming at you from Ohio, which is one of my favorite states for no real reason other than it having a great name and some great music.

If These Trees Could Talk
We've discussed my love of experimental post-metal whatever you wanna call it before... probably. I never really stop babbling on here so it's pretty likely that we have. If These Trees Could Talk bring the experience to a whole new level-- a sonic cinema that builds forests from scratch. It's like watching a thousand years pass as a redwood forest emerges from nothingness into a towering canopy of life, or as stars convalesce, illuminate, combust, and die, from the safety of your headphones.

Wide Eyes
Let's keep on the same beautiful track with Wide Eyes, another instrumental whatever you wanna call it metal band that makes the world unfold in your earbuds. There's a lot more drop tuning here, and a much darker edge, which is something that for me, makes the whole sound even more enticing, because, on one side, you have this wide open night sky with spinning technicolor nebulas, and on the other, you have the same nebulas being torn to shreds by black holes. That was all the astronomical terminology I have for today.

Breathe Till Dawn
Heading in a slightly different direction, let's talk about how unbelievably good Breathe Til Dawn is. And that their singer is 16 years old and has one of the most beautiful, mature voices I have heard in my life. If you want something orchestral and still pop punk and still kind of metal, you can not go anywhere but here. Not only have they found the sweet spot between music and vocals, they've coordinated clean and unclean vocals in a way that  lot of bands fail to-- so that the unclean vocals not only sound great, but sound like they were meant to be where they are, that nothing else could make sense. Fantastic. I'm raving. Excuse me.

Worthwhile
There's such a beautiful feeling of the sky ripping in half when you listen to Worthwhile. It's this melancholy angst that isn't demanding pity, just a voice and maybe an ear to hear it. The melodic side of hardcore is a side that, when touched this fantastically, deserves as much attention as possible.