The Armed - THE FUTURE IS HERE AND EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE DESTROYED (2025) Hi-Res

For their sixth album, hardcore punk collective The Armed purposely started writing without any premeditated ideas. After the conceptual trilogy of their last three albums—2018’s Only Love, 2021’s ULTRAPOP and 2023’s Perfect Saviors—they decided to focus on urgency over detailed lyrical cohesiveness. “It felt like a new era, like we were leaving something behind,” vocalist and de facto spokesperson Tony Wolski tells Apple Music. “In starting something new, we wanted it to come from a place that was animalistic.”

Mathcore and screamo have come a long way. Gone are the technical metal subtexts and Mahavishnu-isms that were at much of its core, when guitar pyrotechnics were favored over a good, old-fashioned song.

The Armed are emblematic of the genre's future. The Detroit collective has never been afraid of taking a few chances, experimenting with pop, indie, dance, synthwave, noise and a buffet of subgenres all within the skeleton of unhinged hardcore and blastbeats. It's not a new formula—bands like Dillinger Escape Plan, The Locust, and Blood Brothers have pushed the limits of what the genre could bear. But in The Armed's case, the spirit of adventure and the chances of its successful execution are higher.

The Future is Here and Everything Needs To Be Destroyed isn't just their latest album title—it feels like a mission statement. Guests like Patrick Shiroishi, Kurt Ballou (Converge), Troy Van Leeuwen (Queen of the Stone Age), Meghan O'Neil (Punch, King Woman), Ben Chisholm (Chelsea Wolfe) and all members of of Prostitute join the Armed in creating track after track of unforgettable pandemonium.

Lead single "Well Made Play" is built on a bed of soaring synths but alternates between distorted vocals and winding free-jazz sax for the duration of the song, all while propelled by mind-bending drum fills and unrelenting blasts. Meanwhile, "Purity Drag" leans into a mix of clean vocals and noisy screams, using the former to guide the melody and the latter to add the requisite punch. Both tracks are controlled mayhem, but have focused, well-crafted melodies at their center. The Armed knows that no one cares about your impressive sweep-picking riff if you can't hum along to the damn thing.