REVIEW: Boneflower - Reveries

Spanish skramz staple stuns screamo skeptics

37:49 // July 25, 2025 // Deathwish Inc.

No matter how adventurous of a music fan you may be, some genres take more adjusting to than others. For me, screamo has long been one of those “problem styles”. While raw black metal or the extremities of funeral doom felt (relatively) comfortable from my earliest exposure to them, my first dives into screamo found me instantly aging about three decades and becoming your parents, hollering “what is this noise?”.

With the passing of the years and my ensuing quest for ever more tasty jams, I’ve come back to the genre time and again. My ears have acclimated, but still, I’m picky. Most of the recent acclaimed screamo records (there’s been a lot, what a nice contemporary revival we have on our hands) have found me able to appreciate the quality, but typically not feeling much interest in revisiting frequently. The notable exception was State Faults’ recent masterpiece, Children of the Moon.

I’d characterize Boneflower’s third full-length as fitting into the same niche as that album - i.e., screamo which doesn’t apologize for being screamo, but also manages to be engaging to a significantly wider base of listeners outside of the genre’s core fanbase. And within that little subgenre, this is one lovely record. Not only does Reveries sound great to these ears, but it also has immense replay value, a statement proven by the dozen or so times I’ve spun it in under a week.

What makes this record so good? It’s a trickier question that you might think, as much of Boneflower’s success here feels like the result of cumulative successes in a bunch of small things rather than striking triumphs in one particular aspect. The tried-and-true screamo/post-rock hybrid is presented here in a top-notch way, for one thing, this isn’t an album built primarily upon crescendos or dynamic contrasts, but the beautiful, rich soundscapes and frequent clean vocals intertwine wonderfully with the harsher moments of screeching passion sure to alarm the aforementioned parents and Ed Sheeran fans alike. Tracks like “The Sun And The Moon” and “Sad Bird” are notably successful in this regard, but such praises certainly represent the norm here. The balance of all elements is key, as is the pacing - at thirteen tracks around thirty-eight minutes in total, the runtime is basically perfect for this kind of release, and feels even better when fast-paced rippers and more subdued tracks play off one another for maximum impact.

In a way, that State Faults name drop earlier in the review probably does Reveries no favors. Boneflower certainly appear to have more modest aspirations here than their across-the-Atlantic counterparts did last year - the hugely shorter runtime compared to Children of the Moon aside, the vibe here is more “consistent and tasteful excellence” vs. “many jawdropping moments”, let alone curveballs like a wildly successful attempt at a screamo power ballad (“Bodega Head”). And, even within its reduced confines, Reveries isn’t quite a perfect record - most egregiously, interlude track “I Gazed At The Starred Night All Alone And Blood Tasted Like Honey In My Mouth, Lethargic” feels about as overlong as its overwrought title - but this album nonetheless feels near ideal for what is, comfortable in its own shoes, and satisfyingly approachable in its more bite-sized presentation. Balancing mercurial emotional flights with impressive craft and even a sense of elegance, I fully expect it to soundtrack many more hours of my life, in good times and bad. As is typical of this quietly confident record, closer “The Void” couldn’t be better suited for its position - less frantic than many of its predecessor tracks, while resting somewhere between brooding and elegiac. “Why does it feel like dying?”, the vocalist muses. They say that you stare at the void and the void stares back, but if Reveries is any indication, Boneflower aren’t blinking.

8.5/10