New Music – Feel Shame

The musical equivalent to self-immolation, Internal Incarceration coming from Year Of The Knife is predatory. From the kill switches or the chugging one-two punch, every second spent with Year Of The Knife becomes a denser cloud of dread.

Opening with “This Time,” immediately the record bursts into flames with a mosh-pit educing spin kick in the form of two-minutes-and-15-seconds. Never faltering, the way that Andrew Kisielewski on the percussion is a driving force of the aggression becomes showcased through the consistent crashes that conflict against his brother, Aaron Kisielewski on the guitar. Keeping a family nature, both Madison Watkins on bass and Brandon Watkins on the guitar work together as Tyler Mullen shouts his way through the 13 total tracks.

Not one moment is put to waste as Year Of the Knife moves into “Stay Away” that is a backyard brawl of antisocial remarks and awareness to social distancing. Describing, “I’ll sabotage anything that holds my hand. Or tries to help me understand, one more thing to throw away…” Internal Incarceration then pushes the band into a chorus of sorts that illustrates, “Stay the fuck away from me, two hearts always separate, stay the fuck away from me. Three times the apologies.” For the closest thing to a nursery rhyme of hardcore, Year Of The Knife finishes with “Four counts of abandonment, stay the fuck away from me.”

Instead of reconciling with forming sluggish tracks to fill the gaps of uninterrupted pulverizing, Year Of The Knife leaves no images of mercy to reach the audience. Primarily, each track is designed to break you down and leave the wreckage in shambles. Like tiny pictures in the hand, Year Of The Knife spikes them and stomps with combat boots until the remaining image is a shattered frame of memory.

The 30-minute runtime is necessary as Internal Incarceration is a sprint of endurance to the finish. Somehow enjoyable through a majority, the time is recollected as a tattoo; painful but receives some reward out of enduring the misery. One of the later tracks takes “Sick Statistic” that has some remnants of a build-up that pours over into molten destruction. The instrumentation here is really what becomes fascinating to study and demands respect or it will be taken.

The train chug that occurs through the strings that clash is god-like and form a tier that continues to etch into the mind even long after the last note is played. The 13 tracks are not entirely torture but are linked to becoming a dungeon of sound. Little light is let in, and the audience is desperate for reprieve.

Listen To Internal Incarceration Here!!! – BandCamp/Spotify/Amazon/iTunes