The human brain is an extravagant organ — capable of withholding long-term information, decades of memories, dreams, scenarios, and a plethora of emotions. Yet it still somehow drags our ever-demanding meat suits throughout our ever-demanding lives. However, also caged within it are the more unpleasant and darker instincts of our species — rage, isolation, longing, and the ever-bleak outlook of the world around us. Some artists choose to express this sort of nasty shit locked in our cortexes and turn pain into meaning — and this meaning is found without mercy.
Hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, metalcore/hardcore veterans Varials have released the most unique and yet one of the heaviest albums I've heard in a very long time (trust me, I get to listen to a lot of metal bands in this life of work). "Where The Light Leaves" marks the fourth album released with Fearless Records and is a 13-track mercy-beating of unforgiving, down-tuned beatdown guitars, skull-cracking drums, and upfront, grooving bass leads, with flashes of eerie, desolate atmospheres that drip this cold, bleak backdrop. This is the metal embodiment of wrath. This new era of the band also showcases newly joined vocalist and frontman, Skyler Conder — an absolute unit, with vocals that feel like they rip you limb-from-fucking-limb and can melodically put you back together. Produced by Josh Schroeder (Lorna Shore, Dayseeker, The Plot In You), the mix throughout the album feels like it splits the Earth in two: guitars (Shane Lyons) sound like they're strumming fucking rebar, the drums (Sean Rauchut) groove with impressive footwork, every fill is crisp to the hit, and the vocals (Skyler Conder) are vicious and versatile with Conder's unique ability to have unique gritty lows and be able to switch to ethereal melancholic clean melodies. The most insane part is the bass (Mike Foley) — this guy is at the frontlines with the rest of the band, and every note sounds like it's going to blow my damn speakers out — it's fucking beautiful. "Where The Light Leaves" marks a new era for Varials — not only for their now unstoppable-sounding lineup but also for furthering their spot as one of metal's most monstrous acts to date.
"The World Will Know My Fucking Pain"
The first flicker of the band's new era lies in the opening and self-titled track, "Where The Light Leaves" — a murderous hardcore stomping opener with eerie panning static and distant, desolate groans exploding into absolute beatdown madness. Previously released as a single, it was accompanied by a music video (racking up over a quarter million views in 2 months) showcasing the band in a dreamlike black-and-white parking lot, surrounded by death-awaiting lines, bystanders falling off roofs, and Conder breaking lights to give way to darkness. The track stomps and builds as Conder rips into us with the anguish of mental entrapment and freezing. This is a killer start, and on track one, I'm throwing damn elbows. If Varials were divine beings, this album would be Revelations.
"No Lie Untouched" is raw and atmospheric — with bass and drum-fronted grooves melding into grinding guitars. The track will bleed itself in and out of translucency with clean melodic guitars that drone themselves back into the blasting grindstone, while the vocals bark hardcore bile at you throughout it. "Illusions of Loss" is edged in galloping chugs and head-bobbing verses, while the drum fills from Rauchut nicely catch the song back and forth into each damning transition. The end breakdown of this track is a fucking fatality — levitating itself in the disarray while the vocals chaotically dog-pile themselves in these grief-filled illusions. "Conscious Collapse" gives a glimpse into nu-metal with nasty bends and grooving drum choruses before twisting the bones back into beatdown territory. The breakdown is equally murderous as the previous track, which is insane, because at this point I have already crowd-killed the dog, the cat, and I've roundhoused the goddamn goldfish — I'm running out of things to take my anger out on. "Your Soul Feeds" is so far the most wrath-filled-sounding track of this album's first half. Conder slips out glimpses of bleak and haunting cleans while he transitions into more extreme metal gutturals, gifting us his pain of atrocity. The guitar tone from Lyons throughout this album is tightly compressed in its chugs and breakdowns, but in its riffing, it bleeds out with sharp-edged notes that stand out tremendously. (I find this guitar tone on par with Chelsea Grin's 2012 "Evolve" EP, with how I might just tone-chase it in my spare time).
"Where the Light Leaves" (Single) OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
"Enter The Hurt Chamber"
This is the part of the album that gets really interesting and where Varials displays their convictions of versatility, atmosphere, and how edged the band has become in their song composition. Also, a previously released single, "The Hurt Chamber," is unlike anything the band has shown thus far on this album. The track splits itself between melodic downtuned grooves and soft pianos, while Conder delivers distantly somber and ethereal clean vocal choruses on self-destructive addictions to objects, feelings, and people. This one is geared similarly to some of the tracks found in their fan-favorite 2019 album, "In Darkness," where Varials acquired a massive amount of new fans, myself included. There's a balance between harsh anger and melancholic loss riddled in the album, and this one has been my personal favorite. Continuing across the softer underbelly is "[wouldyoufollowme]," a soft, acoustic-strummed track layered over a distorted radio-conversation background that feels like a confession. Conder echoes out these touching distant cleans; we're reminded maybe our wrath isn't as purified as we believed. Anger is but a by-product of something once tender. There's this raw and real feeling throughout the album, and tracks like these complement it, giving a nice touch of diversity and character to the rest of this relentless release.
"The Hurt Chamber" OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
Put away your feelings, bitch, and take this ass-whooping like a man — "Silent Demise" ricochets us into sporadic drum and guitar verses and a catchy-ass chorus groove that drags its knuckles on the pavement. "Blissful End" is Rauchut's spotlight song, riddling the track with impressive snare hits and cyclic-like footwork, while still dueling the guitars in dissonant transitions and crisp chinas in breakdowns. The man is a machine, and the track itself is similarly in that same fast lane of energy.
"I'll Find The Dark Again"
For those of us who first found Varials back during their acclaimed "In Darkness" album, this new era did not leave us behind but brought us with it. We have a fucking "Romance II" — similar to the previous album's first take on it (titled "Romance"), it continues with its delicate take on longing with atmospheric echoed chords and synths and a catchy and peaking "closer to God" chorus, except now it's doubled down on breaking fragile cleans and harsher vocals. This is a powerful emotional track, and as a song sequel, it does the original great justice.
As such, the pattern with this album — soft shit doesn't live long around here. "Metanoia" (Greek for repentance and change) kicks us back into tremolo-style guitars and drums bouncing into big and open distorted chords. The instruments give this track a powerful, big-chest feeling while Conder preaches his sermon of suffering. "I'll Find The Dark" is haunting — these drops throughout the song are earthquaking, and the background droning during heavy bass and drum building leaves this track feeling the coldest and most on par with this album's theme of a distressing existence, overwhelming grief, and mental purgatory. This shit is heavy and features Lyons delivering a nicely ripped but quick reverbed guitar solo before dropping itself back into desolation. The closing track "[intothequiet]" is an instrumental, similar to its former counterpart in the album, an interlude. Featuring growing white noise, bass distortion, and synths. A growing radio voice breaks in and out of phrases, continuing in sentences of "where the light leaves" before closing out the album.
"I'll Find the Dark" OFFICIAL MUSIC VIDEO
"Where The Light Leaves" is a powerhouse of an album, displaying some of the best stupid heavy tracks and yet intelligently intertwining itself in distorted interludes and somber and emotionally charged choruses and balancing itself between rage and mental loss. The eerie-tinged atmosphere, melodies, and effects give this release a disturbing and yet reflective feel throughout that captures the themes of mental encagement, grief, and cold stares into the void — and you can feel it crawl under your skin. The mix is incredibly concrete, and this speaker's popping avenue makes every minute of this thing make itself known and really take full effect. I don't review anything I don't personally enjoy, but this album was beyond expectation and crowns itself as a new personal favorite of mine. Conder's vocals and song ingenuity bring this band to a level that will find them surrounded as one of metal's must-see acts in the very near future. Varials has unleashed this new era upon us, leading in with a monstrous album that breaks and heals all on its own but spares no one.
Catch Varials this coming March-April on their "Where The Light Leaves" US release tour, supported by Heavy//Hitter, Unity TX, and BoltCutter here:
