Detroit's metalcore band The Armed debuted with
These Are Lights (2009), that contains spastic vignettes like
Party at Pablo's,
I Steal What I Want and
Grand Party Frankenstein.
09-11 (2011) compiles These Are Lights and the EPs Common Enemies (2010) and Young & Beautiful (2011).
The EP Spreading Joy (2012) contains two of their most devastating songs:
Cop Friends and Sterling Results.
Untitled (No Rest Until Ruin, 2015),
produced by Kurt Ballou of Converge, continued the mission
with unrelenting fury (Future Drugs) but
melody surfaced in the middle of the mayhem
(Forever Scum).
Dead Actress begins with two minutes of simple, slow, balladry before
plunging into dissonant banging and screaming.
After the live Unanticipated (2016),
Only Love (2018)
introduced elements of dance-punk (Nowhere to be Found)
and shoegazing
(in Fortune's Daughter but still played at lightning speed).
Kurt Ballou's loud and distorted production is the real protagonist of
Ultrapop (2021). He turns some songs into
euphoric statements but sometimes also in simply cacophonous moments.
Remove the thick sheen of distortion, and
Ultrapop is melodic slocore and Average Death is lame shoegaze-pop.
Luckily the synthesis of the band's punk-pop verve and Ballou's genocidal production yields some powerful songs:
Masunaga Vapors is almost blackgaze (black metal/ shoegaze),
A Life So Wonderful has a refrain that basically consists purely of senseless banging,
Where Man Knows Want is a fit of pure hysteria,
and Real Folk Blues is a savage visceral banger.
The industrial/punkish hoedown All Futures is the most "entertaining" of
these songs, but the real standout is
Big Shell, a suffocating molotov cocktail of screams and pummeling drums.
