Demersal’s charged brush casts multicolor strokes of hardcore, post-rock, and screamo in all directions. Abrasiveness and harmony occupy background and foreground on the band’s new self-titled sophomore album.

It captures the turbulence of a world steeped in crisis and inequality, a world needing relief. With ideals and aggression, the band rebukes dominant ideologies—and with cloudy eyes, signals empathy for the disheartened. The band says, “It serves as a counterpoint to modern capitalist ideals of self-sufficiency—the notion that one should be a strong individual who’s able to stand up for oneself and one's own values alone—and it encourages to share one’s vulnerability with caring people and to reach out when the world feels the most incomprehensible.”

"Demersal" opens with vulnerability—the song “Flakkende Som Tusind Lys” approaches quietly, adding piano notes and synthy atmospherics to an anxious guitar and vocal.

But most of what follows is metal ricocheting around avalanches of sound—scream-singing, layered guitars, and fueled drums and bass. It’s dynamic and vivid.

Arpeggios open album single “Lys I Natten” and chime into a tight cadence. The song gets mathy, then melodic, with layers of low- and high-end guitar. From moment to moment, this band soars or menaces.

“Something” is a journey. A tension-shaping bass follows a subdued opening, then the volume swells into a hardcore onslaught succeeded by a shoulder-bruising breakdown at 1:40. Next, everything hushes and rebuilds with modest orchestration that pushes and draws air shapes.

I also like screamo song “Vakuum” and its fevered drumming and dream-captured bass guitar. Demersal comes up with some fantastic guitar arrangements, but those would be greatly diminished without the strong bass and drum performances.

Demersal, from Denmark, released its debut EP, “To Mend a Yellow Wound,” in 2017 and its first full-length album, “Less,” in 2020. The band’s new release, "Demersal," was released just May 10, 2024.