Oakland hardcore band Cell Rot (who share members with Power Alone and Mass Arrest) debuted in 2018 with their Violent Spirals LP, followed in 2019 with a split with World Peace (who also just dropped a killer LP earlier this month), and now they’re set to put out a new six-song EP, Slowly Falls Apart, this Friday (4/2) via Convulse Records (pre-order).

“Our newest record is an exploration of existential neurosis,” vocalist Kyle Canyon tells us. “Representations of the apocalypse are always shown as a flash happenings, the push of a button and the worlds over. But we’re not getting the ending we were promised, instead it all just slowly falls apart.”

They deliver their dire message through a vessel of harsh, caustic, metallic hardcore, recorded to gnarled perfection by Jack Shirley. Kyle’s venomous bark owes as much to black & death metal as it does to hardcore, and the band offer up a pretty wide palette of sounds, from circle-pit-inducing hardcore to stomping metalcore to blasts of grind/powerviolence fury, and more. The whole EP kicks serious ass, as you can hear for yourself right now. We’re premiering an early stream of it: