With a well-received debut album, a UK tour, and appearances at The Fest and SXSW in the last few years, Wounded Touch have proven to be in it to win it.
The Michigan metalcore outfit has appeared on No Echo in the past, most recently in support of their aforementioned AMERICANXIETY LP, in 2022, and they're back with new material in tow.
"We’d been getting anxious in between releases and started writing to pass time and try stuff out, especially with some new pedals and experimental tunings," says Wounded Touch vocalist Nick Holland. "So we wrote a few tracks and took our friend Matt Marquez from Norma Jean up on an offer to record us at his new studio and we’d been talking for awhile with FallFiftyFeet about wanting to do something together, so we decided to do a split with them since they also had two tracks they’d been sitting on."
Wounded Touch recently released a music video for "Submitted for (Dis)Approval," a track from the forthcoming Traumatic Entanglement split EP:
In celebration of Traumatic Entanglement, the gentlemen in Wounded Touch put together a list of some of the metalcore bands that influenced them as musicians and songwriters during their formative years.
Enjoy!
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Killswitch Engage, Alive or Just Breathing
"The record that started it all for most people discovering the genre in the '00s, this album is still contemporary in so much of its sound while still retaining a “you had to be there” production and songwriting approach from just coming out of the '90s.
"Whatever the band would become or be known as afterward, this record remains a blisteringly heavy yet emotive metalcore staple." -(Nick Holland, vocals)
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Skycamefalling, 10.21
"This girl I knew in middle school was hooking up with an older guy and stole his CDs when it went bad. She ended up handing these CDs out to me and my two other friends, because she knew we liked 'screaming music.' 10.21 was one of the CDs I got.
"It was the first thing I had ever heard like this, like straight-up metalcore with post-hardcore vibes. Just filled to the brim with heavy grooves, dramatic peaks and valleys. It made me feel like I had missed something and I had to go back and check out these bands." -(Kyle Maddock, guitars)
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Unearth, The Oncoming Storm
"The riffs on this album might be so good that they almost overshadow everything else. This record wasn’t like much else when it dropped and there still aren’t many metalcore albums that have come close to its sound. Hugely unique and influential and something we regularly listen to on tour drives." -Nick
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Scarlet, Cult Classic
"Cult Classic is an album I found by getting a Ferret Music music sampler, and out of all the amazing features of other potential artists that could’ve taken an album spot for me, the song 'Untitled' still stands out as one that changed my perspective of heavy music in a more chaotic disjointed way, and I still frequently listen to it to this day. The full album is an accumulation of many great tracks that shaped my musical taste." -(Jeremy Schultz, drums)
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Poison the Well, The Opposite of December
"What can be said about this album that hasn’t already been said? This record was so far ahead of its time that most bands in the genre and a lot of adjacent genres forget what they owe to this one release.
"If any band doesn’t have this record listed among their influential metalcore releases, they’re full of it because it doesn’t just have everything…it is everything." -Nick
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The Bled, Pass the Flask
"This was the heaviest thing I had ever heard a post-hardcore band do when I first got my hands on it. I think I was 14 years old. Pass the Flask is the perfect middle ground, blending mathy melodies with some of the heaviest breakdowns out there. It is essential listening." -Kyle
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Converge, No Heroes
"Somehow this is a more overlooked or under-mentioned Converge record, which is wild considering it’s perfect front to back. Most of us were still in middle school when Jane Doe and You Fail Me came out, so this one hit at the right time and changed everything in terms of what metalcore could be and sound like for those of us playing catch-up at that age.
"It's a regularly referenced source of inspiration for content and emotion for us." -Nick
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Botch, We Are the Romans
"I found We Are the Romans around the same time as Cult Classic, soon to come across many more of these bands who wouldn't exist without Botch. On top of having learned of Brian Cooks’ other projects at the time, I was already a huge fan.
"Tim Latona was a huge influence on my drumming. It filled a spot for me that solidified the super technical side of heavy music that I relate to most, and each listen is always just like the very first. A notable track is 'I Wanna Be a Sex Symbol on My Own Terms' but this is one to listen to in full every time." -Jeremy
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Poison the Well, Tear From the Red
"Yes, Poison the Well is on this list twice, but for good reason. It’s unbelievable they were able to follow up The Opposite of December with anything, let alone a more refined version of themselves that pushes the envelope and is equally as experimental.
"Seriously tell me you don’t hear the opening chords of 'Botchla' and know immediately what it is that’s playing. This is probably the first record you should show someone if they ask what metalcore sounds like." -Nick
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The Wounded Touch x FallFiftyFeet split EP, Traumatic Entanglement, will be out on August 24th via Smartpunk Records.
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