Genre : Mathcore, Noisecore
Released : October 1st, 2021
Label : Self-released
FFO : Car Bomb, Danza, Will Haven, fucking sonic madness
Apparently Covid-19 shutting down most of the world wasn't enough, so Frontierer decided to shut down the entire heavy music industry as well with this release.
That's it, that's the review.
You can keep scrolling now.
Nah but jokes aside, I'm gonna try and be as objective as possible with this commentary, however, I believe it is no exaggeration to say that Frontierer have undoubtedly (somehow) surpassed themselves on "Oxidized" and have further refined their crafting of unruly sonic chaos.
If you're already familiar with the band, you know that you can expect a relentless assault of the senses.
But even then, "Oxidized" feels more unforgiving than its two predecessors and the band basically laughs at your face if you were naïve enough to believe you were prepared for the experience.
This is the embodiment of the polar opposite of "safe listening".
Nothing is safe, the notion of structure is thrown into a meat grinder and you are presented with two options : Either become utterly transfixed by the sheer heaviness of it all and giggle at how stupidly pummeling and disorientating the music is, or, run away scared and scarred by what you've just listened to.
And yet, paradoxically, although "Oxidized" is perhaps the most unrelenting material the band has produced so far, it is also their most nuanced and diverse.
Most notably due to the much more frequent and noticeable incorporation of electronic sound design, further experimentation with guitar sound effects and the inclusion of heavily reverbed clean vocals on certain tracks, which open up a new dimension to the band's sound and create some interesting dynamics.
The feature guest vocals from both Grady Avenell (Will Haven) and Kevin McCaughey (Ion Dissonance) also play their part in diversifying the record's feel and are both key points during its run-time.
Now, I'm not even gonna try and pretend that I know the first thing about chemistry but my good friend, the Cambridge Dictionary told me that :
"If a substance oxidizes, it combines with oxygen and loses hydrogen to form another substance."
The way I see it, this step forward into even more chaotic and experimental territory than ever before in their past catalogue mirrors the chemical process of oxidizing.
And if hydrogen stands for the mainstream heavy music scene in this half-arsed analogy of mine, then Frontierer are, in my opinion, the oxygen that is oxidizing heavy music as we know it and slowly creating a new extreme sub-genre all of its own which transcends beyond the limitations of current heavy music.
To conclude, I'm extremely happy to see this band continuing to push boundaries that seemed almost impossible to push any further than they already had, and I'm excited to see where they're gonna go from here in the future, especially now that they're starting to gain more and more recognition ever since they started working with Blood Blast Distribution.
If you're a fan of extreme music pushed to the extreme then don't miss out on this.
If not,
Run.
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