We shouldn’t have one screamo band called Frail Body and another called Frail Hands. That’s too much. It’s too confusing. And if we are going to have both of those bands, they definitely should not release albums within a couple of months of each other! And if they do that, then one of those albums should suck! They should not both be really good! Unfortunately, nobody coordinated anything, so we’re left to pick through this weird bottleneck of really good records from Frail screamo bands.

Frail Body is the Illinois trio who released the exceptional debut album A Brief Memoriam last year. Frail Hands, on the other hand, have been around a little longer. They come from Nova Scotia, and they released their self-titled debut album back in 2017. When they made that album, they were led by singer Dawn Almeda, who later had to drop out of the band because of vocal strain, something I’m surprised does not happen more often in this genre. Today, Frail Hands, now a four-piece without Almeda, release the new LP parted/departed/apart. It rules.

Almeda is still a presence on the new album; she wrote lyrics for a bunch of the songs. And the band still has the same power they had on that first album. Frail Hands bring the intense dynamic shifts of ’90s basement screamo, howling over erratic riff-churns that sometimes go into moments of fragile beauty. I love how they can make a two-minute song sound like an absolute epic. Stream the album below.

parted/departed/apart is out now on Twelve Gauge Records.