FINAL GASP

Final Gasp’s ability to meld opposing forces into something vibrant and new is encoded into their DNA. Emerging from Boston’s mold-breaking hardcore scene that gave rise to the renegade likes of Converge, Isis and Cave In, they were initially inspired by Glenn Danzig’s cult horror punks Samhain. The process of forging a sound that combined but went beyond their musical background and musical obsessions was one that took a lot of soul-searching, taking them on a path whose destination remains open-ended. The in between hours are the spaces where alchemical magic occurs. 4am night sweats, churning up the stubborn loose ends and residues of unfinished business, that restless awareness of the oblique demands dawn will bring, and stray thoughts flooded with sudden significance – they’re all given an unconstrained, daylight co-ordinates can’t access.

Steeped in nocturnal, death rock adventurism, riven with a post-punk anxiety that feels increasingly like the twitching heart of our modern age, and driven by hardcore punk intensity, the second studio album from Boston’s Final Gasp, New Day Symptoms, does what all great rock records do. Not only does it place itself within a lineage, summoning up and amplifying a spectrum of powers from rock’n’roll lore, it makes them resonate in the here and now. It gives voice to those fears and frustrations lurking just under the surface of waking consciousness and turns them into a rallying cry.

Throughout New Day Symptoms, Final Gasp create a potent reaction from the furious and the forlorn, guitarist/frontman Jake Murphy’s vocals both a supercharged howl into the void and a remorseful echo back. But where the band’s 2023 debut, Mourning Moon, was a concentrated shot of acrid, underground death rock, its propulsion tanks largely filled with references to Samhain and Killing Joke, New Day Symptoms keeps all the core energy while vastly broadening its scope. With new space to explore, this is an album that feels like communal, a mapping of personal trials and dark recesses onto a map dotted with rafters-rousing marker points. Through Look Away’s driving-through-a-pyroclastic-cloud kineticism, chased by the ghosts of In Solitude and Swervedriver, through the anthemic, acid-corroded vistas of Look Away and gothic tub-thumping beat of Gifted Shame to No Hand To Lead’s channelling of Don’t Fear The Reaper’s loping groove and Prediction’s contrast of insurgent riffs and minor-key bracing for disappointment, New Day Symptoms takes the familiar into uncharted territory and makes the unfamiliar instantly, internally recognisable.

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