Florida Americana grit, a Dutch-Danish trio processing gun violence through swampy grunge, and a Brussels metalcore collective who recorded the old-school way: rock this week means four very different rooms.
Fringe Frontier – Criminal Hour
Fringe Frontier’s “Criminal Hour” is a brilliant insomniac rock single: crunchy, melodic, and a scarily vivid evocations of a sleepless 3am you’ll hear all year.
“Criminal Hour” is the title track of Fringe Frontier’s new album, and it announces itself with a lovely driving rhythms and guitars that cut through the arrangement. The song is set in the specific quiet of closed bars and empty streets, the mental loop of a mind that refuses to switch off, and the production really commits that restlessness. And as someone who struggles with sleep, this one really lands; all taut and melodic, but a hell of a lot of fun along the way. And lyric of the month has to. be “Tomorrow’s a train speedin’ round the corner / it’s times like this I wish I were a smoker”.
Fringe Frontier are a Florida-based rock band whose previous LP, Songs from the Wirehouse, was mixed by McKenzie Smith, the Midlake drummer and two-time Grammy winner, and mastered by Grammy-nominee Kim Rosen. Their songwriting draws from Americana storytelling and gritty guitar work, moving between the back counties of the South and New York City as a kind of conceptual geography. It’s a zinger of a single and we hope they continue in this form.
Subterranean Street Society – Thomas Matthew Crooks
Subterranean Street Society’s “Thomas Matthew Crooks” is an excellent piece of folk grunge: a slow-building, swampy groove with gunshots woven into the production and the nerve to let the listener decide what it means.
“Thomas Matthew Crooks” grew out of a single day in which vocalist Louis found himself dealing simultaneously with a depressed flatmate blaming him for their suicidal thoughts and the breaking news of the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. The track makes no clean argument about either event, instead constructing a swampy, bluesy, repetitive groove that moves slowly towards a final eruption, with the sounds of gunshots woven into the production both literally and abstractly within the instruments. The band have described it as something they themselves cannot fully decode, which is exactly what makes it stick. It follows the critically acclaimed single “Kindness” and a support tour through Germany with Laura Cox.
Subterranean Street Society are a Danish-Dutch trio based in Amsterdam, blending folk storytelling with raw grunge energy in a way that sits somewhere between Nirvana and Mumford and Sons without fully belonging to either. Their songs move between fragile, confessional passages and explosive dynamics, and they have a recent NL club tour announced alongside the release. “Thomas Matthew Crooks” is their current single.
Karma Noir – This Is Her Time
Karma Noir’s “This Is Her Time” is a stunning metalcore statement: recorded at Brussels’ Noise Factory Studio with the visceral, unpolished mix that modern production almost never allows.
“This Is Her Time” was recorded at Noise Factory Studio in Belgium, where the producer has previously worked with Channel Zero, and the production is a deliberate rejection of clinical modern mixing. Minimal guitar overlays keep the arrangement open, letting the emotional weight of the song land without competition. The track charts a relationship that shifts from love into manipulation and control, and it handles that subject by blending harsh vocals with clean singing over hooks strong enough to make the darkness genuinely accessible. It sits in conversation with 80s thrash and 90s hardcore without being a pastiche of either.
Karma Noir are a Brussels collective whose songwriting is shaped by a shared fascination with fate, destiny and the forces that operate on human lives beneath the surface of conscious choice. Every member contributes their own influences to the writing process, which is what gives the compositions their shifting atmospheres and prevents the heavy framework from becoming monotonous. “This Is Her Time” was released on 1 October 2025 and is their current single.