Listen: YAITW’s Scary Metal For An Awesome Tomorrow

It was six weeks ago that MS superhunk Vince Neilstein stated that the band Young And In The Way (aka YAITW) scares him. Me too. But it’s a good “scary,” like a rickety rollercoaster or a taxi in San Francisco, like imminent danger to sharpen your instincts and reactions. Not the fantastical “scary” of a band obsessed with massacre or ghosts, nor the dreadful figurative “scary” of a band so dumb that they make the world dumber. Nope, YAITW is the healthiest “scary.” Here’s why:

It is YAITW-style danger that makes metal awesome and metal people more durable. This is metal’s role in society, its basis for immortality: While others can speak about danger, metal makes it tangible. Accordingly, like Slayer’s “Expendable Youth” and “Hallowed Point,” YAITW’s When Life Comes To Death (below) has a weight that presses down on you, a cacophony that monopolizes your perceptions, so that you must withstand and push back or maybe get swallowed up. It represents a visceral test in which we practice pragmatism: We face scary reality to strengthen our resolve for a lifetime of strain. To prepare our emotions for the unspeakable. To put into context the chaos of an infinite universe in which we may be crushed by reckless chance.

Fortify yourself:

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YAITW’s When Life Comes To Death is out today via Deathwish. Order it here and here.