Mason Mercer used to sing for Free At Last, a straight-edge hardcore band from Springfield, Missouri. These days, he leads Muscle Before Paradise, a very different band. Muscle Before Paradise, which also includes Mason’s brother Chandler, are based in New York City, and they make heavy, intense, meditative postpunk. Mason says that the idea for the band came to him during a 2015 motorcycle trip across Vietnam, which is a pretty good origin story for a band.

Muscle Before Paradise released their debut EP Bellycrawl + 1 in 2016, and they’ve just followed it up with the self-recorded seven-song effort Die In Combat. It’s heady, atmospheric music with seesawing riffs and sedate, heavily treated vocals, but it still has some of the urgency of Mason’s hardcore past. This is a tough record, and you can stream it below.

Die In Combat is out now on Advanced Perspective.