A lot of this year’s best hardcore albums aren’t albums at all; they’re EPs. The 2019 joints from bands like Inclination, One Step Closer, Tørsö, Portrayal Of Guilt, and Witchtrial can absolutely hang with anything in the full-length department. And today, we get another addition to that list.

The Southern California band Vamachara make an epic, thundering form of hardcore, one that draws on the grandeur of metal but keeps things slow and crushing. Vamachara have been around for the better part of a decade, and they released their full-length debut Despondent last year. Today, they follow it up with the brutal, flattening new EP Hereafter, which sounds like the skies opening up and winged demons streaming out of it. It fucking rules. Stream it below.

Hereafter is out now on Closed Casket Activities.