Quick-fire Roundup - April 2026
Short reviews for some of our favorite releases of the past month.
Quick-fire Roundup is our chance to highlight a few of the albums we’ve been digging from the past month that we may not have had the time or energy to pump out full essays for. These releases nevertheless deserve a gold star and a spot on the podium.
Tigercub – Nets to Catch the Wind
42:30 // April 10th, 2026 // Loosegroove
Now four albums deep, Tigercub seem to have exhausted any tricks up their sleeve—the Brighton-based trio spend this latest LP continuing to refine their established sweet spot, a riff- and melody-forward strand of alternative rock that recalls the scrappy finesse of first-wave post-grunge (that is to say, “the good stuff”) and the sickly sweet melodrama of radio rock’s turn-of-century zeitgeist. Equal parts Queens of the Stone Age worship and Muse worship, originality has never been the band’s strong suit, but their yield on that formula packs a mightier wallop and a stickier residue than those backhanded compliments would suggest. Every track on Nets... reaps the benefits of Tigercub devoting themselves to this gothic-tinged, hard-edged brooding; the one trick they perform has little competition in 2026, and they occupy the ultra-accessible void as splendidly as ever. (7.0/10)
- Zack Lorenzen
Squarepusher – Kammerkonzert
62:44 // April 10th, 2026 // Warp Records
When I first hit play on Kammerkonzert, I was immediately struck by the impression that Thomas Jenkinson was once again on a Stockhausen spree. This was a mistake brought about by a timely gurgle from my dishwasher. It was not my last mistake. I also had the idea that this konzert of Squarepusher’s was performed with the aid of a modest number of classical musicians, just enough to fit in a generously sized room that may or may not contain both a pot and a maid. No, no! Details regarding Kammerkonzert’s production are scarce, but the only performer listed is the brisk bassist himself. Sometimes it feels as if this is the space Jenkinson wants us to exist in — a spare, modern chamber where we eagerly await his breaking of wind and do our best to parse the floating molecules for signs of his inherent genius.
While I can’t clear the air for you, I can tell you that it only takes about four sniffs to catch the scent. Through the first few tracks, our academic maestro’s compare/contrast variables are set to work: “K1 Advance” hits you with the natural sounding chamber music, all fleeting melodicism and arrangements that stop/start/expand/contract; “K2 Central” throws a quickfire staccato bassline down that refuses to break its bounds beyond shifting its pattern around the fretboard while moody horns, wind instruments and whathaveyous expand the space with measured breaths, setting up a distinct clash of styles within the composition; “K3 Diligence”’s throaty motif turns the elegance of the arrangements into something of a crude joke, even for all the surrounding musicianship; “K4 Fairlands” finally pushes all the pieces towards something resembling IDM, programmed linear drums and all.
Kammerkonzert revels in this clash of styles, in the battle between the synthetic and the intimate, the natural and the unnatural, and the perceived “reality” of the music itself. Sound heady? Well, it’s Squarepusher innit. This Kammer was always going to be ostentatious, brilliant, ridiculous, and stuffy. For my part, I’m much more engaged with the ambition on display here than I was with Dostrotime’s return to Squarepusher’s more obvious strengths. You might be too, but you’ll have to poke your nose in to find out. (7.5/10)
- Milo Ruggles
Necroccultus - The Afterdeath Blackness
32:34 // April 28th, 2026 // Terror From Hell
The level of Necroccultus’ online presence is congruent with the number of fucks they give about trends. I could end this blurb right here, because that’s literally everything you need to know about them, but seeing as The Afterdeath Blackness is the Mexican troupe’s second full-length since their formation in, checks dust-crusted almanac, 2003, a few words of praise are in order.
These guys put the FFS in riffs, which is to say there’s a single layer to their craft and that layer is unalloyed death metal with a focus on foursquare chord progressions. Live by the four bars, die by the four bars. With a concept that simple, the songs naturally need to deliver in the neck-moving department, and boy, do they ever! “Unburied Hellish Presences” alone mops the floor with hundreds of releases from the ‘os’ panoply I’ve put myself through over the past five years, and that’s not even the album’s strongest composition. Or maybe it is. It’s hard to tell when every single track is this consummate in both concept and execution. I could animadvert the spoken-growl kitsch triflingly adulterating the opener and closing title track, but, honestly, what’s the point? If you are old, feel old, or just long for something that sounds old and coincidentally stands on par with the old masters, you’ll dig this. (8.0/10)
- Nex
Sarin - The World Goes on Without You
27:41 // April 3rd, 2026 // Phage Tapes
While I’d generally classify the output of Chicago four-piece Sarin as a mishmash of black-deathened metalcore and powerviolence, plastering this album with tags would do nothing but lead to belied expectations. The World Goes on Without You is chaotic without getting math-y, dark without coming off as a theatrical act, and just non-metallic enough to dodge Hugh’s ‘armpit music’ label. Sample-ridden noise collages serve as interludes, mercifully granting the listener a chance to gasp for air (inconveniently filled with O-Isopropyl methylphosphonofluoridate) between the recurring chokeholds exerted by the perennially gnarled main pieces. Experienced front to back, this one proves to be a briar path, but ultimately rewards the obstinate with a rather original conglomeration of synth-accompanied core inflections, apoplectic blasts, and dissosludge-bordering, lumbering motifs. I prefer this to Converge’s latest in any case. (7.0/10)
- Nex
TOMORA - Come Closer
55:23 // April 17th, 2026 // Fontana Records
TOMORA have arrived. A clever(?) portmanteau of The Chemical Brothers’ Tom Rowlands and alt-pop queen AURORA, this collaboration thankfully goes far deeper than simply slapping two halves of their sounds together. Alternately low-key and high-spirited, Come Closer churns through EDM genres like a paddleboat, and should by all means feel scattershot, but thanks to excellent production and performances, it all melds into a haunted little package. That eeriness stems largely from AURORA’s arresting vocals—whether shouted or murmured, manic or measured, they prove just as malleable as Rowlands’ shapeshifting beats. The way her voice flits around the hi-hats on highlight “I Drink the Light” is sublime, and she effortlessly wrings pathos from cuts like “My Baby” and “The Thing.” But the biggest winner here is the triumphant dance-pop rush of “Somewhere Else.” Its relative polish is the clearest indicator of where this duo’s heart truly lies, and its sheer effortlessness signals that TOMORA won’t likely be a one-off. Old-school meets new talent, and the results are more than just a grab bag of ’90s aestheticism—it’s the real thing. (8.0/10)
- A.R.O.
Angelo de Augustine – Angel in Plainclothes
34:01 // April 24th, 2026 // Asthmatic Kitty
Prevailing after a multi-year struggle to rewire his nervous system, Angelo de Augustine could be forgiven for indulging in some self-help singalongs. Angel in Plainclothes is resolutely not that type of album, however; the singer-songwriter’s fifth LP rarely gleans epiphanies from his breakdown directly, opting to package any newfound clarity through peripheral glimpses and tricks of the light. Though outside help played a role in the album’s production—a change of pace barring basically all but his 2021 collaborative LP with labelmate Sufjan Stevens—the gorgeous songwriting remains de Augustine’s foremost musical objective and his most consistently remarkable attribute. Comparisons to other indie folk legends like Nick Drake, Elliott Smith (especially the dirge-like, haunted “Empty Shell” and “Mirror Mirror”), or Stevens himself are no longer just a marketable perk, but an exorcised frustration: in reclaiming his own well-being, de Augustine shies away from staking his self-worth on his art’s success, making peace with the fragility of life as a broader experience. Two birds, one stone—these chamber-backed arrangements invoke precisely the holy, humbled awe his penmanship has strived for his whole career. (8.0/10)
- Zack Lorenzen
Angine de Poitrine – Vol. II
36:54 // April 3rd, 2026 // ATO
Any of you who’ve fallen down the Angine de Poitrine rabbit hole may be surprised that their latest release, Vol. II, is eligible for this month’s edition of Quick-fire Roundup. Their viral KEXP session first dropped back in February, and the whole gist of their performance—the alien, polka-dot costumes, the prodigious looping, the microtonal instrumentation—took indie music discourse by storm in the months since, offering every financially-incentivized purveyor of this sort of art (i.e. YouTube reactor channels, love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re here to stay) a rare chance to genuinely get flummoxed by content for once in their lives.
By the time I finally checked out that set (which you should admittedly do ASAP if you haven’t already), newer clickbait had already begun to come along. A shame, too, because while Angine de Poitrine sacrifices some of their charm as a quantized, purely auditory experience, stripping away the visual element of their act isn’t even close to a deal-breaker. The six tracks on this project—three carried over from their public debut in that aforementioned set—all groove hard and contain playful multitudes. Listeners predisposed to progressive rock in any of its forms would be remiss to overlook Khn and Klek’s wild ride just because it broke containment. I’d argue no idiosyncratic power duo has ever earned the attention more. (8.0/10)
- Zack Lorenzen
Knotfall - Shoreline
42:08 // April 17, 2026 // Candlepin
Philadelphia’s Knotfall absolutely impress with their debut LP Shoreline - in most respects, it feels like the work of a veteran band operating at the peak of their game. The album is absolutely representative of the indie underground’s recent wave of emo/shoegaze/slowcore-merging acts, but also spends plenty of bandwidth dipping into a much wider range of styles, from electronic tinkering to sudden twists into crushing doom textures. You can’t knock the ambition, but I’d argue Shoreline is at its best when delivering what is clearly the band’s bread-and-butter, illustrated clearly by the mid-album duo of the placid “Endlessly” and the rather eerie “Halloween”. The latter’s attempt at catharsis, as the repeated chorus turns more and more into screaming, might not be very original, but it’s sure effective. All told, there are undoubtedly things for Knotfall to work on going forward, but Shoreline might still be my favorite debut of the year. (8.0/10)
- Sunnyvale
Secrets Kept - III
09:07 // April 19th, 2026 // Speed Ritual
What drives an artist to start forty-six different solo projects? Who in their right mind starts and/or joins eighty-four bands? The answer to both of those questions is of course Jared Moran, and both numbers will likely be outdated this time next week. Take a peek at the insurmountable wall of text that is his M-A entry, then reserve your next three vacations for a full discog run (at sixteen hours of listening per day; alternatively, budget one hour per day for the next year).
Just to give you a picture of what we’re dealing with here, the secret ultimate final boss of database contributors has released two Thousand Cuts EPs, two Loaded Dice EPs, three Morenew newnew new EPs, a new Great Depression EP, and this new Secrets Kept EP in April alone. Mr. Moran being the DIY buff that he is, handling everything from (real) drums to vocals to production himself, a certain amount of overlap between all these aliases is to be expected, and not every release hits, but you can’t deny the pure devotion behind it all.
On III, Jared does Moran things. The end.
Unintelligible bafflegab to some, virtuoso handiwork to others, this set of what I can only assume are the man’s idea of jam sessions serves as a perfect sampling of his ability to let his fingers flow freely across the fretboards and hit the drumheads with somnambulistic precision. As with most of his solo work, it’s very much a ‘take it or leave it’ situation. I, for one, take it.
In all likelihood, J.M. will have released a new EP by the time this column gets published, no /s. Whatever new geopolitical cruelty surfaces tomorrow, I’ll rest easy knowing that somewhere in Mississippi an incomprehensibly gifted man excessively passionate about metal sits in front of a literal wall of cabinets and amps, recording another thirty tracks of unmediated artistic effusion to make the world a madder place.
Moran-Stephens-Walter collab when? (7.0/10)
Note to fans of loud guitar music: In a very 2024 turn of events, April was so stacked, it was impossible to pick the ‘right’ releases to feature here. You should check out all of the following, presented in no particular order:
Cenotafio - La escisión acausal: Por la vía inversa hacia la descarnación
Exhumation / Funeral Chant - Sacred Oath: Temple of Death
Ordh - Blind in Abyssal Realms
Mylingar - Út
Bloodsoaked Necrovoid - Bloodsoaked Necrovoid
Lividus - Scarabaeus
Ignobleth - Manor of Primitive Anticreation
Scimitar - Scimitarium II
Pig’s Blood - Destroying the Spirit
Impure Declaration - Of Veins, Tendons and Bones
Aversio Humanitatis - To Become the Endless Static
Sectarian Defacement - Hostile Consuming Rapture
Hrob - Brána chladu
Scumbag - Scumlord
Nine new offerings from NSE
- Nex
Want even more? Check out our full-length reviews for these other April releases:
