There’s no box that Replacire can’t break. The Boston tech-death band boasts multiple Berklee graduates, one hell of a voice actor and a competitive bodybuilder. But while writing and recording their upcoming third album, all too often, they felt trapped inside their own personal torture chamber. Hence why it’s called The Center That Cannot Hold. Still, these guys banged their heads together and pushed way beyond the finish line. On new single “The Helix Unravels”, they sound tighter than ever.
Listen to “The Helix Unravels”: https://youtu.be/1g33Qd32e4U
The Center That Cannot Hold comes out June 21, 2024 on Season of Mist.
Order & Stream: https://orcd.co/replacirethecenterthatcannotholdpresave
Replacire are always thinking up ways to break metalhead brains. “The Helix Unravels” stems all the way back to 2017. The song’s opening frenzy was already drilled into Eric Alper’s skull when the band was still hot off their first headlining tour. But just as they were all set to enter Alper’s Ugly Duck Studio come March of 2020, the music industry hit a brick wall.
“The pandemic was hard on us”, says Alper. “To stay afloat financially, we had to sell our tour van and move out of our practice space. It felt like everything that we had built up to support the band was falling apart”.
As if that wasn’t enough weight on his shoulders, the mounting stress knocked Alper into a nasty bout of writer’s block. “There were days when all I could do was lay on the couch and hum a half-finished riff”, he says. Luckily, Poh Hock was right beside him to help pick up the slack. Hock twists and turns “The Helix Unravels” into a tight, three-minute burst that works all of tech-death’s core muscles: glitching fret bends, jazzy interludes and downpicked chugs that could break even the thickest of necks.
Still, it’s the band who tie the whole song together. Joey Feretti never takes his foot off the bass drum pedal while Zak Baskin holds down a stomach-churning groove. “Say that we will see this through”, James Dorton screams through clenched teeth before unleashing his mighty death growl.
“We poured all of our blood, sweat and tears into this album”, Alper says. “There were plenty of times where we felt like quitting. But I’m glad we didn’t. The Center That Cannot Hold is the album that Replacire has been striving for since the very beginning”.
With “The Helix Unravels”, Replacire prove their one of the tightest bands in tech-death.
