Review by UnhinderedbyTalent for Knocked Loose - You Won't Go Before You're Supposed To (2024)

Knocked Loose need to calm the fuck down and learn how to write some actual songs. That was my gut reaction to the first full play through of You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. Despite having the track Don’t Reach for Me already on my workout playlist, the full album did not possess the same level of immediacy for me. After multiple listens, I have tempered my initial reaction somewhat. Whilst I cannot pretend to be overly enamoured with the record, I can acknowledge that there is more here than just the furious ranting I heard upon my first listen.

As bizarre as it sounds, the album needs to be listened to fully understand it. Being fooled by the spurious nature of the tracks into thinking that this is just music to batter your head into with little need for focus or attention was a mistake for me. The sub-genre tag that Saxy mentioned of “beatdown metalcore” certainly fits the billing mind. There is little covert activity over these ten songs and the delivery is as rampant as the sub-genre billing suggests. For me at least, that level of consistency needs to be recognised. Picking up such a level of intensity and rarely letting it falter makes for a challenging listen, but it also shows a lot of heart. Listen enough times and you will hear the variety in the tracks though and be able to see beyond the slamming fury of the band overall. They are brief, but there are lulls in the chaos (actual pacing in fact) that somehow do not detract from the primitive intensity of the record.

This is not to say that YWGBYST is not without its flaws. I cannot cope with more than thirty minutes of those vocals, no matter which day of the week it is. They are without doubt the most one-dimensional aspect of Knocked Loose and soon get into “grating” status as they dominate the record far too much. This is a shame, as Knocked loose have much better qualities in the instrumentation itself. But the solid percussion and jarring riffs just get trodden on all too easily by those vocals which are too memorable for all the wrong reasons.

I guess there’s no real surprise to any of the Metal Academy regulars that I am not in love with Knocked Loose. If they genuinely could write more material like the closing track on the record, then we would probably get along better at least. Oh, and change vocalist of course.