I don’t know if you guys have heard about this, but there’s a pandemic that’s killed hundreds of thousands of Americans and kept everyone at home for the better part of a year, with no end in sight. Also, there’s an extremely stressful election in a few days. And it’s Halloween weekend! This is a really, really great day for someone to release an album called Dance In The Decay. The Philadelphia hardcore band Drowse has just done exactly that, and the album lives up to the title.

Drowse have been putting music out since 2016, but Dance In The Decay is their first full-length. The band’s sound is apocalyptic metallic hardcore that occasionally pulls in shards of black metal or gloomy post-punk — something a bit like fellow Philly doomsayers Ink & Dagger, if they were making raging-out music for this dark historical moment.

Drowse singer Evan Zuk tells No Echo, “The record is, at its core, about the acceptance of death, and the comfort that comes from it.” That makes it look like the album will be both dark and emotional. It’s not. It’s definitely dark, but it’s not really emotional. Instead, it’s euphoric — music for ecstatically rubbing blood all over your face and then cartwheeling down the street. Stream it below.

Dance In The Decay is out now on Sore Ear Collective.