Boundaries – Yearning: The Unbeautiful After
Boundaries – Yearning: The Unbeautiful After
Sumerian Records
Release date: 17/07/26
Review by: Oli Gonzalez
7/10
New kids on the block as far as the 25-plus years that the metalcore genre has been gracing our eardrums, 2026 is shaping up to be a solid year for the USA’s Boundaries. With festival appearances that include Download, Rock Am Ring, a tour with genre titans August Burns Red, and a new album “Yearning: The Unbeautiful After”, they’re taking the year by the scruff of the neck for sure!
Boundaries come sprinting out of the blocks and without any warning, they unleash hell! The dirty, down-tuned distorted guitars are dissonant and anything but aesthetic. There is a dual vocal approach to shift the point of attack, with the lead vocals characterised by a fierce mid-range growl and backed up by what can only be described as deranged shrieks of agony! With sub-drops heavy enough to topple buildings (see ‘Bitter ash, bitter love’ for an example of this), this has all the makings for a solid album indeed.
Though the further you get into the album, the more it begins to feel too repetitive. Additionally, it’s hard to really see how Boundaries’ sound can really differentiate itself from a brutally stacked genre. With an ambitious 14-song effort, it’s difficult to make each sound unique organically and believably. Sure, it can get violent and disturbingly heavy at times. Though there’s more to heavy music than just throwing random drops and distorted vocals. There needs to be meaningful build to each; otherwise, it runs the risk of becoming a non-cohesive run of scattergun hooks
Though there are salient moments from the album that are worth dipping into.
‘May This Pain Never Leave’ offers some glimpse of more technical and melodic guitar work, as well as a cleaner sung anthemic chorus, both acting as throwbacks to the early days of the metalcore genre. This early 00s energy, a la Unearth and August Burns Red, is also captured in ‘Unequal Whole’, one of my personal highlights of the album! As I was delving deeper into the album, I was hoping for more songs like this, and hoping Boundaries can be amongst the bands to keep alive the sound of Killswitch Engage, God Forbid et al from that turn of the millennium metalcore sound. ‘Nothing Gathered’ is amongst the last songs on the album that truly captures that blend of ferocity and melody. Whereas the likes of ‘Wasted Angel’ are just 2 minutes and 25 seconds of pure unfiltered primitive rage!
‘Yearning: the unbeautiful after’ is the album’s title track, and a solid finish to the album! Cathartic and punishing in equal measures, this one will demand to be repeated again and again come release day.
No doubt, there is going to be a target audience for the style of music Boundaries have produced (and produced to a high standard, it should be said). Maybe I’m not part of that target audience. There are moments to appreciate in “Yearning: The Unbeautiful After” and glimpses of the band’s potential, though this sadly will fall shorts when compared to the giants of the genre they’re trying to emulate.
TRACKLISTING:
01. Malconscience
02. Skies cast amber black
03. May this pain never leave
04. Torn open wide (ft. Make Them Suffer)
05. Bitter ash, bitter love
06. Unequal whole
07. Death will follow me
08. The leper’s bell
09. Crowned and crucified (ft. Landon Tewers)
10. Wasted angel
11. Evidence of extinction
12. Nothing, gathered
13. Only endless
14. Yearning: the unbeautiful after
LINKS:
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