Chasing Fridays: Azshara, After, smokedope2016, more
Am I fiendishly tapped-in or woefully tapped-out? Plus: metalcore, screamo, ambient, and "Y2k trip-pop."
Damn, I love music. It was another packed week of listening over at Chasing Sundays HQ, where I spent time in the annals of cloud-rap, metalcore, Y2K dentist's office-core, screamo, and ambient music. My favorite editions of this newsletter are the ones where I really run the gamut and jolt between a multitude of unrelated genres that all showcase different sides of my musical personality. This is one of those editions, so I hope you enjoy what I wrote about down below.
As always, the final portion of Chasing Fridays, in which I go in on an older album I've been spending time with, is for paying subscribers only. So you can toss me $5/month to read that section of this newsletter, as well as all the other paywalled content on this site. The support from my paid subscribers allows me to dedicate as much time as I do to this blog, so I sincerely appreciate everyone who contributes monetarily. The type of criticism I do here is harder to come by than ever before, so I believe that your support is going to a good cause.
smokedope2016 - The Peak
This is one of the first articles on the internet about smokedope2016. Something that amazes and saddens and frightens me is how much incredibly popular and important – as well as popular and unimportant – music from the 2020s is spawning and growing and dying without a single professional music journalist writing about it. Outside of an uncontextualized mention in a Fader "New Music Friday" post from January, I can't find a sole sentence about smokedope2016 in any reputable (or even un-reputable!) music publication. These two student newspaper articles are the only outlets who've published anything about him. Every other piece of info about the quasi-anonymous Virginia rapper lives on fan forums (Reddit, Rate Your Music, Album of the Year) and YouTube, where his music has hundreds of thousands of streams and his video interviews with Masked Gorilla and Our Generation Music have enough engagement to ensure he's a person of interest to underground rap, for better or worse.
The thing is, I don't know whether smokedope2016's schtick is for better or worse. That's what I've been trying to figure out since his new album The Peak dropped earlier this year and briefly hovered atop the Rate Your Music 2025 albums chart. Before that album's buzz landed on my feed, I only associated smokedope2016 with Joeyy, the controversial cloud-rap figure whose Shed Theory collective has been chastised by many of his peers for their open association with right-wing troll Sam Hyde. smokedope2016's most popular song, 2022's "I'M NOT GOOD BUT I WISH I WAS," features a verse from Joeyy, and I refrained from giving any of smokedope2016's other music the time of day on the principle that Joeyy is wack and Shed Theory is sketchy in the way a lot of black-metal is sketchily affiliated with white nationalist bullshit.
Even so, I've continually seen smokedope2016's name on my screen over the last couple months, and I even gave The Peak a cursory listen in February to see what the hubbub was about. To me, it sounded like pretty surface-level drainer detritus, except with production that's more Clams Casino than Whitearmor. It didn't interest me enough to come back on my own volition, but I revisited it once again over the weekend when I saw a viral tweet (see above) from some random account who lumped smokedope2016 in with a bunch of the underground rappers who supposedly have annoying fanbases. Most people in the quote-tweets rightly came to the defense of prettifun, and a bunch of others chimed in to rescue smokedope2016's reputation from a near-fatal relation to Edward Skeletrix. Frustratingly, the post and its engagement only made me more confused about smokedope2016's credibility and who he's associated with.
Given the anemic state of music media, it's hard for me to discern whether smokedope2016 is being ignored by rap tastemakers because his music is perceived as bad/uninteresting, because he's unofficially blacklisted for his affiliation with Shed Theory, or if it's truly just a matter of limited bandwidth: not enough writers to cover every corner of the bustling internet rap underground. I don't have a prescription to offer here, and I'm not complaining to disparage any publication or cadre of writers in particular. It's just crazy to me that this guy is as big as he is and there's no authoritative document that a) explains who he is and what he's doing and b) if what he's doing is any good or not. As someone who listens to, researches, and then writes about music for a living, it's jarringly difficult to find verifiable information about an artist with a quarter-million Spotify monthlies. I wish it wasn't so.
When I brought this subject up with my friend the other day he told me, "you're the one who has to write this." I wavered. I'm in a weird position with a lot of this kind of music: tapped-in enough to know who smokedope2016 is and that he matters, but not enough to know the particulars of his profile. Maybe I just need to buck up and offer an opinion to get the ball rolling. I'm listening to The Peak for the third time while I'm writing this, and I don't know if it's Stockholm syndrome or what, but the music's growing on me. His voice doesn't have Black Kray's disorienting chirps or Yung Lean's hypnagogic slurs, but his comparatively subdued delivery has a different charm over these circa-2013 cloud-rap beats. His vocabulary feels knowingly revivalist of 2010s slang, dropping words like "faded," "crunk," and "marley" with the regularity of a frat-rap hopeful in a Taylor Gang snapback. The Peak's highlight, "In Da Party," makes me feel nostalgic for a time when A$AP Rocky poured out of iPhone speakers in dorm-room smoke seshes – so it'll find a natural home in the Snow Strippers/Bassvictim/Fakemink milieu of early 2010s party playlist nostalgia.
The Peak and its 2024 predecessor, THE COMEUP, have a few fun moments and a lot of boring patches that sound derivative and undeveloped. As of now, I'm still skeptical of smokedope2016. He was still making public appearances with Joeyy as recently as last summer, so his tolerance for Shed Theory's nefarious associations keeps my eyebrows raised. Plus, the disparity between his undeniable popularity and the way he's totally disregarded by every rap writer I follow online makes me feel like I'm missing out on an unspoken critical consensus. Or maybe not. Maybe I'm reading too deep into this. Maybe I'm more tapped-in than I'm giving myself credit for. Maybe smokedope2016 is about to become a media staple who gets profiled in every glossy fashion mag. Or maybe he'll fall off and I'll completely forget he existed by the end of the year. Regardless, if this rambling blog post encourages just one other mutual of mine to weigh in on this guy and start a conversation outside of the fandom, I'll consider it a success.
Azshara - Ashen Skies
Last November, Azshara played one of the best sets I've seen in recent memory at a DIY hardcore showcase in my home city of Rochester, NY. The Syracuse metalcore band features members of Balmora and Deal With God, and the breed of metalcore they play has, for the last year-and-a-half, gotten more popular in hardcore circles with each passing month. The demo Azshara dropped via Ephyra Records in late 2023 was pretty good, but they really clicked for me in the live environment. The taut double-kick breakdowns are built for spinkicks and windmills, and watching a room of mostly younger kids move to the faster melodic death metal parts really put the physicality of Azshara's music into perspective.
Last week, Azshara released their first proper EP, Ashen Skies, via Daze Records, the most influential label for heavy hardcore in the 2020s. The music on this batch is a little less hardcore and a little more melodeath than Azshara's demo. There're loquacious riff passages with tons of tremolo picking, as well as bridges that are more lurching than they are chuggy. I don't know if I like it as much as the demo, which was better at knowing its role: decadent mosh fodder that could also soundtrack sword fights in a crumbling cathedral. Ashen Skies is a little too self-serious and capital-"m" Metal without full-throatedly embracing melodeath in all of its cheesy glory, like how Upon Stone and Gatecreeper did on their 2024 LPs. I'm curious to see how people will mosh to this stuff when I see Azshara next week on the Daze Tour, but I'm feeling a little underwhelmed by the direction the band moved in on Ashen Skies.
After - "300 Dreams"
I'm intrigued by this band called After who've been dribbling out singles for a couple years and just opened a leg of Glixen's U.S. tour. They describe themselves as "Massive Attack meets Michelle Branch" and "Y2k trip-pop," which are really savvy ways to get a music journalist's attention, so bravo on that front. Their latest single "300 Days" does in fact sound like if Branch's The Spirit Room was instead made by a band like Ivy: a notch or two more spartan and ethereal than what made it onto the radio in the early 2000s, though ebullient enough to slot into a playlist alongside Colbie Caillat. I'm only 75% sold on "300 Dreams" as a song. The vision is there, but something about the actual product sounds a little flat and sterile. Some of After's previous songs are more up my alley.
"Ever" sounds like Amy Lee fronting Bowery Electric's Lushlife (85% sold). "The Story" refashions the second two lines of Vanessa Carlton's "A Thousand Miles" hook into something that could've fit onto Beabadoobee's Beatopia (90% there). "Obvious" is a more convincing go at the Michelle Branch lane, with synthetic strings that swell like a playground parachute and a vocal delivery that puts some actual grit in singer Justine Dorsey's throat (sold! To the man who's no longer wearing a skeptical smirk, but a genuine smile). If Magdalena Bay got less quirky on Imaginal Disk instead of more, then they might've written a couple songs like "300 Dreams" and "Obvious." The window is most definitely open for a band like After right now. I'm interested to see how they'll sound once they end up stepping through.
bulletsbetweentongues - Fragility
Screamo and metalcore are bleeding into one another right now in some really interesting ways. That band Holder haven't left my feed since I wrote about them last month, and the Texas group bulletsbetweentongues are poised for a legitimate breakthrough beyond the DIY circuit. The Denton band have released music on the oft-mentioned Ephyra Records, the Balmora-run metalcore/screamo/deathcore hub who are teaming with Trustkill Records later this summer to reboot the legendary Y2k metalcore bonanza Hellfest (now dubbed Hellphyra). bulletsbetweentongues will be playing that fest (alongside Prayer for Cleansing, Eighteen Visions, etc.), and I'll be seeing them next week at a tiny DIY spot in Pittsburgh – a guaranteed "I was there" moment given the run they're on right now.
Earlier this month, bulletsbetweentongues self-released their new album, Fragility. Sonically, it's a huge level up from last year's The Lights Never Lie, which was lo-fi and skronky in a way that's customary for screamo and emoviolence bands. The sleek, muscular Fragility sounds like a bona fide Metalcore record: gnashing riffs, wood-splitting breakdowns, and vocals that thrash and claw like a threatened grizzly bear. The band's ragtag screamo-meets-bludgeoning hardcore sound still felt clunky on The Lights Never Lie, but they ironed out the bumps on Fragility and now sound far heavier and tighter than I expected them to. The riffing on a song like "Luxuria" is complex without being masturbatory, and the mosh part in "My Dearest Faith" is simply disgusting. I'm sensing traces of Maylene and the Sons of Disaster, The Chariot, and Poison the Well, but of course filtered through a zillennial's retroactive perspective on that era. Vicarious nostalgia only goes so far, though. It's the inertia in bulletsbetweentongues' songwriting, playing, and presentation that makes Fragility a worthwhile listen.
Los Thuthanaka - Los Thuthanaka
gato0rtega
The timeline was cheering when this dropped over the weekend, and I pressed play at the laundromat without the slightest idea of what I was getting into. I spent the next hour making an array of enthusiastic facial gestures into the reflection of the washing machines, the clothes spinning and sloshing in a way that was rhythmically out of sync yet spiritually lined up with the jagged, stuttering beats I was grooving to. The collaboration between Bolivian American producer Chuquimamani-Condori (formerly known as Elysia Crampton) and their brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton is the first under their Los Thuthanaka moniker. I'm not going to pretend to have the slightest knowledge about their previous projects – and that's OK. You don't need to know anything about them to enjoy Los Thuthanaka, one of the most otherworldly, chromatic, and elastic dance records I've ever heard. Seriously, this is brilliant stuff. Just smash "play" and start moving.
This Is Lorelei - "Dancing in the Club" (MJ Lenderman Version)"
Hank: Yup.
Bill: Yep.
Dale: Mm-hm.
Boomhauer: Dang 'ole lonely summer breeze, man.
Subscribe to Chasing Sundays for $5/month to continue reading the final segment of each Chasing Fridays column, where I go in on an older record that I've recently been spending time with.