“What’s my name?” “Knocked Loose, motherfucker!”
Knocked Loose is quick to grab your attention. Eight years ago, the Kentucky hardcore band went viral with “Counting Worms,” in which vocalist Bryan Garris precedes a breakdown with two words, or barks if you will: “arf arf.”
It’s the viral mosh call that put the five-piece on the map, but they know how to turn things up a notch. As the group prepares to take the stage on a Friday night in Lawrence, Kansas, a sold-out crowd begins barking in unison – like a pack of wild dogs ready to unleash their most animalistic tendencies.
But it’s one of Knocked Loose’s newer songs, “Deep in the Willow,” in which the band takes their mosh-ready sound to the next level. The song came halfway through their set, in which Garris asks the crowd, “What’s my name?” The crowd responds, “Knocked Loose, motherfucker!” Then comes chaos: fans run into one another, sweat pouring off their faces, their heads banging to the breakdown.
Many metal bands water down their sound as they gain popularity, sacrificing their edge for the sake of accessibility – what I like to refer to as “Octanecore.” But Knocked Loose has done the opposite.
The band’s new album, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To, gives Octanecore the middle finger. It’s the heaviest release of their career, and – a year removed from playing Coachella – it’s only going to make them more popular. For metal fans, it’s refreshing to see a band go heavier, rather than the other way around.
“I’m a fan of a lot of bands that made the switch and got softer. But for us, it’s just, one, not an option, and two, it’s fun to see how far we can stretch being extreme and getting these more mainstream opportunities,” Garris said in an interview with Nik Nocturnal.
On their rookie record, Laugh Tracks, Knocked Loose sounded like the hardcore scene, merging a straightforward hardcore style with elements of metalcore. But they’ve grown beyond the constraints of a local hardcore band, and that’s affected their ambitions. “Now, when we approach a breakdown, it’s, like, we’re gonna play in front of 2,000 people. They’re not going to beat ass, so let’s just make them scared and feel like they’re trapped,” Garris jokes.
Following their debut, Knocked Loose transitioned from drop G to standard A guitar tuning, and they’ve played a lot more to their metal influences with breakdowns and mosh riffs. Unlike their peers who go all-in on drop tunings, Knocked Loose has opted for a throwback – to the same approach as nu metal legends Korn.
Throughout their career, Korn has mostly leaned on standard A tuning, utilizing seven-string guitars to extend their range and dense layering and distortion to make their sound more terrifying. This same approach has aided Knocked Loose in their move from beatdown hardcore to filthy heavy metal in less than a decade.
Quite simply, the band sounds bigger – and people have taken notice.
“If hell had a guitar tone, it’d be what Knocked Loose’s Isaac Hale and Nicko Calderon conjure up from their Ibanez seven-string beasts,” journalist Perry Bean said in an article for Premier Guitar.
But even with the metallic shift on A Different Shade of Blue, it wasn’t until 2021’s EP A Tear in the Fabric of Life when the band shifted their creative process. What once was just five musicians in a room jamming transformed into full experimentation – with a specific strategy in mind.
“Let’s just write songs that are extreme versions of Knocked Loose,” Garris said. The final product was the strongest release of their career.
Soon after, Coachella called, and Knocked Loose needed another heavy-hitter. Out came not one, but two: The Upon Loss singles. The band wanted new material to promo at the festival, and album three wasn’t ready yet. Plus, it was their first opportunity to work with Drew Fulk – known for his work with metalcore bands like Wage, War, Fit for a King, and We Came as Romans – rather than Will Putney.
Thus, “Knocked Loose, motherfucker” is born. As if A Tear in the Fabric of Life wasn’t enough of a roller coaster ride, “Deep in the Willow” and “Everything Is Quiet Now” were even more off the rails. The group entered new territory musically, with elements of death and thrash metal to complement their hardcore and metal stylings. You can hear more semblance of acts like Slayer, Hatebreed, and Suicide Silence – among the members’ biggest influences.
“Sacrificing the heaviness was never an option,” guitarist Isaac Hale said in an interview with Kerrang. “If anything, as this band grows, it only gets more uncomfortable and extreme. Because that’s where we want to take it.”
Fulk doesn’t turn Knocked Loose into any of these bands, insteading helping them come into their own more than ever – that means darker, angrier, and nastier. It only made sense, then, that he would end up producing their forthcoming third record, You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To.
“[It’s] a Drew Fulk-produced record. But it’s also kind of a Knocked Loose-produced record,” Hale said. “It was about us having gotten to the point where we want to push the boundaries: to get that bigger mix, to find a sound that was a bit larger than life, to have each song feel like an event.”
Just a week before the album’s release was the sold-out Lawrence show, which competed with Sanguisabogg and Jesus Piece at another venue down the street on the same night. It wasn’t a problem, though: Both shows still sold out. How’s that for an event?
Since venues reopened after the pandemic, live music has snowballed into a bigger force than ever – and no genre has shown more strength in numbers than metal. Knocked Loose is just one of many heavy bands to sell out a show in my area in the past two years, along with Beartooth, Bad Omens, Ice Nine Kills, Lorna Shore, Turnstile, and even Kublai Khan.
Whether it’s the anxious uncertainty of the pandemic that got people more into metal or the mere fact metal fans aren’t taking live music for granted anymore, the intensity couldn’t be higher. Going into the Lawrence show, Knocked Loose already had to cut songs short on the first two shows of their tour due to crowd injuries.
They kicked off this set with “Blinding Faith,” the first single off the new album. Garris and Hale trade vocal duties in the verses – Hale’s death metal growls a stark contrast to Garris’ high-pitched hollers. Then, Calderon joins the two for another memorable mosh call, “Bend the knee / Child of God.” Cue breakdown.
The lead single hints at religious themes appearing throughout You Won’t Go Before You’re Supposed To. No, Knocked Loose isn’t a Christian band now – in fact, in “Blinding Faith,” the narrator rejects faking their beliefs to fall in line. They’ve written religious lyrics throughout their career, whether it’s unforgivable sins in “Mistakes Like Fractures” or attempts at salvation in “Denied by Fate.” But Garris says there’s a lot more to the cross on the album cover than just struggles with the church.
“This cross can symbolize anything that constantly towers over you and pulls you back in. It can mean death. It can mean depression. It can mean addiction. Whatever your big glowing cross might be.”
The band has never shied away from politics either. They speak out about LGBT discrimination in “Oblivions Peak,” dedicating the song to the LGBT community when performing live. They even endorsed Mitch McConnell’s opponent in Kentucky’s senatorial election. (While McConnell was reelected, I do feel a kinship with Kentucky as a Kansas resident whose state has also elected a Democratic governor and protected abortion rights.)
Garris is a fan of Tyler Childers, a left-leaning country musician hailing from his home state who has raised awareness of issues such as LGBT rights and racist policing in his music. He was especially elated when he got to meet Ethel Cain, a trans gospel-influenced folk singer, at Coachella last year.
Cain wasn’t the only musical star to hear Knocked Loose at Coachella. Billie Eilish was in the crowd that night. AEW wrestler Bryan Keith has also professed his love for the band. Perhaps Code Orange isn’t the only metal band we’ll hear on the wrestling stage.
Knocked Loose performed two additional new songs in Lawrence: “Don’t Reach for Me” and “Suffocate.” The latter, featuring synthpop-turned-metal-princess Poppy, brings together an unlikely duo in her and Garris. It was actually Poppy’s idea too – she reached out to Garris about the feature, and the band churned the song out in two hours.
“Suffocate” is one of the new album’s heaviest songs, but it’s also one of the most unique. Poppy’s piercing screams fit perfectly alongside Garris, leading into a reggaeton-style breakdown – complete with a thunderous drum beat. By the outro, it’s hard to tell the two vocalists apart.
The group also features Chris Motionless in “Slaughterhouse 2,” a spiritual successor to Motionless in White’s “Slaughterhouse” and another politically charged cut – this one tackling capitalism and class warfare (can we talk about how great the line “One mutilation under God” is?). Then there’s the 46-second “Moss Covers All,” the shortest track in their catalog.
The new album as a whole is a quick burst of fury, clocking in at just 28 minutes – nearly the same runtime as Slayer’s iconic Reign in Blood (fun fact: “Piece by Piece” is the name of the second track on both LPs). The band take cues from the thrash legends too: Cut the excess, make every moment matter.
Garris is incredibly proud of the output, saying the album was “the most challenging thing I’ve ever done artistically.” Not only is it the most explosive of the group’s three full-lengths, but it’s also their crowning achievement.
The hardcore scene is already seeing other acts follow Knocked Loose’s lead, merging hardcore and metal into a style that’s not exactly metalcore but is something much more ominous. There’s the aforementioned Jesus Piece, a sludgy metal band with their roots in the Philadelphia hardcore scene, as well as fellow Pure Noise Records labelmates Chamber, Inclination, and Year of the Knife – all playing a role in the current wave of hardcore.
Yet, it’s Knocked Loose who has featured on festival lineups with Bad Bunny and Blackpink – and they’ve done it without compromising any of their heavy metal tendencies. In fact, it’s their veering into heavier territory that keeps making them bigger. Now, we’re awaiting just how heavy they can go next.
“I want to see how big we can get being the extreme band that’s not supposed to be big,” Garris said.
Featured Image Credit: Knocked Loose (Tim Cayem), Bryan Garris (Steve Thrasher for Aftershock Festival)
The Verbatim 