Chasing Fridays: Amira Elfeky, 7 mini-reviews, Daze tour report

Hello hello, hope your stock portfolios are doing alright this week amidst all this tariff bullshit and general destruction of the U.S. economy. Alas, we persist here at Chasing Sundays LLC, and so does the proliferation of new music. Hence why I'm eschewing this week's lookback on an older release and dedicating this particular newsletter to New Music Only. I penned seven brief yet juicy blurbs on seven new releases from the last couple weeks, excavated the latest offering from a mainstream nu-gaze hopeful, and then went long on the most important hardcore tour of 2025.

There's no paywalled section for this edition of Chasing Fridays, but as always, if you like reading my work and are able to support me by subscribing for $5/month, that generosity goes a long way. Most of my weekly newsletters have a whole section that's for premium subscribers only, and you'll also get access to any other paywalled content on my site. Many thanks to all of my paid supporters. Alright, onward.

Amira Elfeky - Surrender

Last year I wrote about Amira Elfeky, the alt-pop hopeful-turned-Deftones-core TikTok breakout who Atlantic Records is positioning as the face of nu-gaze. I didn't like Elfeky's music, but I was interested in observing how a major label was marketing a vaguely shoegazey artist during the genre's commercial renaissance, which of course dovetails(ed?) with nu-metal's resurgence. Elfeky's brooding first single, "Tonight (demo)," split the difference between muddy grunge-gaze and moody alt-metal, and her 2024 Skin to Skin EP drew from the same vein: Evanescence-ish vocals sung with a waifish sluggishness over gloomy guitars bathed in reverb. Now, Elfeky has returned with her follow-up EP, Surrender, and I think its musical evolution is a telling sign of where the wind is blowing in regards to nu-gaze's mainstream popularity.

In short, Surrender has very little shoegaze atmosphere and a whole lot of metalcore bombast. Elfeky will open for Bring Me the Horizon's U.S. arena tour later this fall, and most of these tracks sound like they were tailored to win over that specific market. The lowercase girl mysteriousness that pervaded Elfeky's older material has been painted over with a gaudy Corpse Bride aesthetic that screams Hot Topic circa 2008, and the music follows suit. The "oh-oh" vocal melody on opener "Take Me Under" sounds like a scratch demo for Flyleaf's "All Around Me," at least until a glitchy djent breakdown gets awkwardly squished into its bridge. Nearly every song on Surrender has its own ridiculously hamfisted metalcore chug section, which all ring like transparent gestures to shift Elfeky into the pop-metal world that Poppy and Sleep Token inhabit.

The trace amounts of shoegaze that turned up in her previous material has been left behind, not that their inclusion would've made this batch of music any better. Even when one of Surrender's songs offers something inoffensively palatable (the BMTH-indebted "Will You Love Me When I'm Dead," the acoustic-laden Paramore rip "Death of Me"), nothing about Elfeky's musical disposition feels genuine. She has the personality of a wax figurine; all Instagram-able artifice, no humanly flawed soul. Meanwhile, the production from bigwig metalcore/pop-punk duo Zakk Cervini and Andrew Goldstein is sterile and plasticky, and the songwriting is hampered by a gratuitous one-breakdown-per-song quota. Altogether, Surrender sounds focus-tested and boring. I've been idealistically optimistic that one of these TikTok micro-stars will use a major label budget to make an uncannily interesting bastardization of shoegaze and pop. Instead, Amira Elfeky is making the "nu-gaze" equivalent to the mainstream pop-punk detritus that Machine Gun Kelly and jxdn were pumping out five years ago. Not intriguingly bad or even accidentally good. Just bad.

Short thoughts on a bunch of new releases...

It's been a busy month for new releases, and rather than weighing in on some at the expense of others, I figured I'd just do a little roundup of a bunch of shit I've been spending time with lately. Short and sweet – rare for a loquacious motherfucker like me.

Raisa K - Affectionately

I've yet to become ML Buch-pilled (though I'm not ruling it out) and I like Astrid Sonne a normal amount. But I really love this Raisa K record, a clutch of foggy experimental pop with twinges of industrial and trip-hop that just sort of drifts along with a spooky-stoney strut.

kuru - "I saw it coming"

kuru is part of an elite cadre of artists (jane remover, d0llywood1) who are carrying the torch for digicore in the mid-2020s. I was huge into last year's re:wired album, and "I saw it coming" might be even better than that whole record. Their stutter-stop delivery is so drippy that it makes Nettspend's voice sound dry, and the synths alternately buzz and bulge like a chimney bellows coughing out stardust.

Cootie Catcher - shy at first

Wonderfully wholesome bedroom twee that's glitchier and kookier than most bands operating in this lane. Ever wondered what Frankie Cosmos collaborating with Dan Deacon would sound like? Me neither, but I'm so glad that I now have access to that approximation.

Japanese Breakfast - "Honey Water"

There're a handful of great songs on Japanese Breakfast's middling new album, but "Honey Water" is the only one I anticipate returning to with any regularity. It's the only song on the album that rocks out, which is unfortunate because Michelle Zauner sounds really good when she's rocking out.

DJ Python - i was put on this earth

I've been stuck on this little downtempo EP for the last week. The way the bass crackles on "Marry Me Maia" and how the synth melody boings on "Eli's Lived Behind My House Forever" has a grounding effect on my body and mind. The perfect confluence of whimsy and craftsmanship.

Skrillex - F*CK YOU SKRILLEX YOU THINK UR ANDY WARHOL BUT UR NOT!! <3

I didn't realize how badly I needed new Skrillex in my life until I heard Quest for Fire in early 2023 and couldn't turn it off all that year. Two years later, he's returned with a new data dump of drops that plays like an ode to dubstep-era mixtapes (think Excision's Shambhala mixes). It's not quite as replenishing as Quest for Fire was, but the thing about being an adult Skrillex fan is that you don't choose when he re-enters your life. That's part of the fun.

YT - OI!

YT and Lancey Foux's "Black & Tan" was one of my favorite songs of 2024, and the YT record it finally lands on is a joyous bundle of British ringtone rap that'll make you pull the stupidest possible dance moves on your kitchen tile. "Arenas" is my favorite of the bunch, a deliriously catchy celebration of Benihana date nights and Balenciaga footwear.

Torture, Balmora, Sanction, Azshara, Power of Fear live at @ Preserving Underground

When future hardcore historians pose the question, "what was hardcore in 2025?" I'll point them to this show flier. To me, the ongoing Daze Tour (Torture, Sanction, Balmora, Azshara, and, on some dates, Final Resting Place) is the apotheosis of the genre's current moment: a time when hardcore is metalcore, and death metal is hardcore. The genre is in a fascinatingly fluid place right now – and I'm not talking about hardcore bands "breaking boundaries" by playing Kimmel and getting looks from Post Malone. The attention that hardcore has gotten from outside of the subculture post-Glow On is, at this point, the least interesting part of hardcore's arc in the 2020s. Whether it's Scowl making "hardcore purists angry" in the New York Times or Travis Barker wearing the Speed jersey, there's so much hollow noise cluttering the broader discourse that obfuscates what's actually happening on the genre's ground level. Shows like this – DIY bands in a DIY venue playing to kids who fundamentally appreciate the authenticity of what they're being served – is what makes hardcore the most exciting live music scene in America right now. Bands who aren't engaging with hardcore in those spaces are irrelevant, as is anyone with an opinion on hardcore's "current moment" who only sees shows in Live Nation venues.

Anywhooo. The Daze Tour's second night in Pittsburgh is why I care about this shit. 200-ish people crammed in the basement of an old church beating the hell out of each other with the lights on, VFW style. ​Blood hit the floorboards. A few dumbasses got sent packing for picking fights with crowd-killers. Enough wind was produced from flailing arms and flying legs to fuel a small town for a day or two. Pittsburgh bare-knucklers Power of Fear – the city's sole Daze band – were the most conventional hardcore band on the bill. I've always been so-so on their regional beatdown fare, but this was the most animated and locked-in that I've ever seen them, and the city's scene showed strong representation on the dancefloor so all the touring bands knew there was a bar to meet. Azshara met it with their riffy metalcore of the Undying variety, and then Balmora bested that reaction by pulling out a few deathcore-tinged heaters from their new EP (their heaviest release yet).

Balmora and Azshara play the trendiest form of metalcore in the genre right now and are hugely beloved by the young 20-somethings who run the dancefloors in Pittsburgh. Therefore, I wasn't surprised by the reaction they received. I was blown away, however, by Sanction's set. The Long Island band were the only pre-COVID group on the bill, and the music they put out in the late 2010s missed me at the time, but was lowkey integral to any hardcore fan five years my junior. Now, their frantic metallic hardcore blitzes – peppered with straight-up deathcore brees 'n' bass bombs – are directly in-line with the zeitgeist, so Sanction have both elder statesmen respect and cutting-edge clout. In other words, they were perfectly primed to get the best response of the night. The pitting didn't stop for a second during their set, as kids hand-sprung and clobbered into the walls of the crowd with an unceasing ferocity, and then ran up to lunge for the mic during one of several pile-up parts. Their records are a little too professional sounding for my current taste, but live, they're unbelievably tight and unrelentingly heavy. Just undeniable.

Torture, coming hot off their latest internet controversy (iykyk, otherwise, don't worry about it), are the biggest band on this bill, but they actually got a weaker response than Sanction. I think that's partially because Sanction haven't played Pittsburgh since 2021, so kids were absolutely feral to see those songs live. Meanwhile, Torture have played this venue three times in one year, and at this point, I think the novelty is starting to wear off. Halfway through their set of mind-numbing chugs, the pit devolved into goofy rough-housing between friends, with kids jumping on each other's shoulders and people picking fights just for the hell of it. The way people behaved at Torture shows during their spring 2024 breakout can never be replicated, so at this point, I think the band needs some new material to pique people's interest again. Otherwise, their sets just serve as a backdrop to mischief – and not the fun or entertaining kind. It was honestly veering on corny at points, even though the band are sounding better than ever.

Altogether, the show was a reassuring temperature check that hardcore in Pittsburgh continues to thrive four-ish years beyond lockdown. Tonight, I'll see bulletsbetweentongues with six other screamo bands in a new DIY spot, where I expect to see many of the same faces from the Daze show. Next week, I'll see Restraining Order at a different DIY spot with a few locals from the punkier side of Pittsburgh hardcore, and I'm confident that will pop off as well. Hardcore doesn't need to have its boundaries busted open or its gates knocked down. It's prospering all on its own as any healthy subculture should. If the Daze Tour's doesn't conform to your idea of what hardcore should be, that's fine. But this is what hardcore is right now. And we're having plenty of fun without you.