Rising Star 89: Scuffed Boots, Crown Fire, No Surrender

Rising Star 89 feels like a freight train that suddenly rolls into a sleepy burg, loud enough to wake you up, but also honest enough for you to stick around with it. Your mug is now ready—your beer is waiting above the floorboards, the static buzz riffling the speakers, the concrete dust hanging onto the vocal like some additional weight, and the float of an ash-bodied ember, drifting somewhere between the kick drum and your diaphragm. If 88 represented the embers, 89 is the spark at ignition: a crown fires off into the half-light, reckless—and still looking to land deliberate.

The session has a different kind of drift to it. Hip-hop, metal, indie rock, and pop don't just coexist—they agitate, scrape, and spark off until something shifts. The thing about this art is it never needs to draw neat lines of genre, all instinct as it were, bruised flesh, and whatever slick or straight truth their lungs can take. Each track feels like somebody punched through the northern ceiling they've held for decades. There's a bit more here or there you might say, but the throughline isn't really style—it's survival.

The imperfections don't mask the music—they urge it on. There's a riff that conjures gravel stuck in an engine's gears, a bassline that kicks like boots on crushed concrete, a hook that cuts through the dirt, like neon in fog. And pressed in the ache is a subtle dusty American sensibility of steel strings and a tumble-weary sadness—just enough to anchor it to the chaos without holding it back.

The story happens in micro-beats: tension, release, fracture, rebuild. In one second, you're in a hazy room where the rap lines land like confessions shared over a beer; in the next second, you're inside a completely metal breakdown that feels like steel and fire. Then the indie guitars glide in and bend (like the asphalt on a hot day), and the pop production glues it all into something uncomfortably buoyant—reminding you that a fractured story can still glow.

Rising Star 89 doesn't care about polish or playlist. It acts with a threat-of-corporate-warrior mindset; execute effectively, deliver with authenticity, drown out the noise with something real. It's the sonic equivalent of a leader who steps into a boardroom in scuffed boots and still owns the room.

The fluctuations in pacing are deliberate. An expeditious swing here, a slow burn there, emotional whiplash woven together with intention. The textual repeated references - beer, static, concrete, ash - every individual note is anchored within the material world. It is human. It is messy. It is unavoidable.

And even more importantly, it is artists reclaiming their narrative in real-time.

Rising Star 89 stands elevated; sweat-lined and pulse-forward, not demanding attention but earning it, track by track; inhale by inhale. Crank it up. Let it rattle the windows. Let it remind you music hits hardest still, when it carries with it the scars of how it was made.

Rising Star 89 has no concern for polish or playlist. It operates with a threat-of-corporate-warrior mentality; execute well, be real, and drown it all with something that is real. It's the sound equivalent of a leader stepping into a boardroom in scuffed boots and still conveying authority.

The pacing shifts are intentional. A quick swing in one area, a slow burn in another; emotional whiplash intentionally stitched face to face. The written repetition of - beer, static, concrete, ash – every single note remains tied back to the material world. It is human. It is messy. There is not escape.

And moreover it is artists taking back ownership of their story in real-time.

Rising Star 89 rises above; sweat stained and pulse forward, not commanding attention but earning its attention one track at a time, one breathe at a time; turn it up. Let it rattle the windows. Let it remind you music is still biggest because there are scars of how it was made.

They Can’t Kill Us All: AGDYNASTY’s Cinematic Revolution in Sound

There is an instant, just before the first song on They Can't Kill Us All truly kicks in, where you can almost hear AGDYNASTY take a breath. Not the kind of aesthetic inhale you hear from an artist in a studio, but something more akin to the raw static of memory: the beer-sticky floor of the basement where his brother played him beats for the first time; the concrete stillness after a long day of school in Georgia; the glow of ash on the last few frames of the late-night movies he watched with his dad. And in that is where the story begins. And in that is where this album is anchored — within the domain of family legacy and American expectations.

Arun Gopal, the Georgia son of Indian immigrants, carries his history like a film score: cinematic, yes, but also fractured, restless, and coded with the emotional micro-beats of someone who was raised absorbing two cultural frequencies at once. He talks about loving Akira, The Matrix, and The Godfather—not because these films were “cool,” but because they felt like prophecy. The soundtracks, as he describes, were not backdrop; they were maps. They were blueprints. They were the way out. The way forward. And if you listen closely, you can feel those influences humming beneath all the 808s, each sax line, and each strange little melodic shift on the new project.

They Can’t Kill Us All has a narrative arc to it—half-love letter, half-rallying cry. AG frames the album in a form of “love and revolution” story, two forces he sees as inseparable in this political moment. Not in an abstract sense. He’s talking about survival. Community. The quiet, stubborn insistence that tenderness and resistance can occupy the same room together and not apologize for it. Some records chase polish. This one chases purpose. You can feel it in the pacing—sometimes fast and sharp, other times drifting like smoke around a streetlamp.

You can’t argue with the Atlanta influence; there’s something about the grit and bounce, the smell of iron from that early-2000s trap feeling that’s woven throughout the album. AGDYNASTY takes that same inspiration and mutates it into something that feels more serious, more filmic. He establishes worlds, burns them down, then establishes them once again. There are moments that feel like walking between two states of being: one foot in nostalgia and one foot in experimental R&B, and in between those two feet is a hallway lit by synthesizers that sound like the crackling of static in a VHS tape. It is an assemblage that doesn’t ask permission.

AGDYNASTY’s favorite record at this point is KILLERS & REBELS; it explodes like a bonfire, a posse cut with teeth; it’s not just showing and telling, it’s a declaration. You can hear AGDYNASTY wrestling with his mythology and asking his collaborators to rise to the occasion, living in stacking like a filmmaker stacking talented people, voices, etc. The narrative of the record moves like a chase scene: abrupt cuts, sparks, grit, and heat are upon the listener. This chaotic richness of volume and pace clenches through out the spiritual midpoint in the heroic arc: the threshold moment where the protagonist recognizes there is no turning back.

Although the album expresses strength and rage, there is vulnerability woven through it. You can hear this in the sax lines that crack just a bit. In the beats that resemble stepping through fog after rain. In those subtle transitions, AG allows listeners to breathe, even just for a second, before bringing them back to the action. He sees audience connection as something that is not spectacle but openness. As shared bravery. As storytelling that blurs the line between artist and listener to both take the same revolution, shoulder to shoulder.

Ultimately, They Can't Kill Us All isn't about defiance for defiance's sake. It's about legacy—the kind his family took across the ocean, the kind he is carving out track by track. AGDYNASTY is not trying to create a record that fits neatly in genre lanes or contemporary market categories. He is creating something that can last longer than trends, critics, or the next political ash storm. Something that feels alive. Something that will not go away. And in a marketplace oversaturated with noise, this work stands on its own concrete—in a state of existence—fully alive, present, unbothered, and unmovable.

Inticome War – Ayıp Memleketim Ayıp

Following decades inside the systems, there’s a certain kind of silence that sits on a person—tight, rigid, cold as concrete. For 32 years, Inticome War lived while built in the clean symmetry of code; building frameworks, managing people, preventing systems from collapse while serving the logic of machines. At the extrema, he was in a world that seemed stable. Efficient. Everything in its place. Below the surface, however, life was turning to static—brittle static—crawling under the skin whispering that something human was missing. With the collapse of that outline, he didn't fall open - he cracked.

The music walked through the fracture. Not with elegance, not with polish but blunt truth. The arrival of Inticome War, the musician, or artist was not in the sense of traditional musicians or artist but rather a human being that was desperately looking for air. This urgency is stamped all over his collaborative single "Ayıp Memleketim Ayıp." The new single is even when based on AI-generated production, nothing about it feels artificial, not like Mars, not like smog. Because it hit like a shard sharp, hot and unapologetic—it is the architecture and journey that belongs to on Inticome War mind. The Turkish lyrics, the intention, the rage, the ash would be everything that produced "Ayıp Memleketim Ayıp."

Listeners will pick up on it right away: This song throbs with a kind of digital defiance, though the defiance is human. He is not using artificial intelligence as an escape route, but as a loudspeaker. The beat swings with machine-like precision while his voice bears the bruised texture of lived experience. The contrast - the friction - is where the electricity occurs. Corporate creatives might term it strategic tension, Inticome War calls it survival. Every line takes on the hypocrisy and injustice baked into the bones of society, and he does it unflinching, without smoothing the edges. No euphemisms. No safe out.

At one point in the song, his tight vocal delivery sounds as if he is pulling memory up from his gut. You can visualize the room he wrote it in: small, darkish lighting; lukewarm beer on the desk; a laptop buzzing with static hum; and a heart trying to relearn how to speak in its own voice. Narrative psychology has a name for this moment—the "reconstruction phase"—the phase in a Hero’s Journey where the hero pulls tools of reinvention for the first time. In Inticome War’s case, the tool was not a sword; it was a sentence. And a sentence. And a sentence. Each representing a scar he decided not to bury.

What sets "Ayıp Memleketim Ayıp" apart from most political songs is its emotional cadence. Rather than shout, it throbs. There are micro-beats of hesitation, little cracks for air, small drops in tone where you sense the weight of the unsaid. There is a commitment with those choices directly with the audience. It feels weirdly intimate through digital production, almost analog. This is a sort of authenticity that no record label can replicate, no algorithm can predict. The message is clear: shame is not abstract. Shame is real, and it stains.

Visually, Inticome War leans into this duality — human softness over mechanical scaffolding. The visuals surrounding the release echo his interior landscape: glitch textures laid over clean geometric structures, splashes of color in gray-scale frames. Its branding displays the truth. He is not a product of pop fabricated perfection — he is a man learning how to breathe again while standing in the fumes of what he created. Etched in his vulnerability is its own aesthetic. And, in the current music economy - where consumerism demands transparency and values emotional ROI - it hits the sweet spot.

Ultimately, "Ayıp Memleketim Ayıp" is more than an album; it is a tipping point. A new chapter. A proof of concept as well: technology can be a vehicle for humanity, instead of a threat to it. While Inticome War may claim he is still sick, still healing, still learning how to write emotive substance instead of technology—ironically, that's exactly what makes him a compelling voice in Turkey's where-to next alt-tech music scene. Each new note is another breath. Another space out of the static. Another crack to let the light in.

From Ashes to Embers: Deaf Locust’s Fearless Return with Kakorrhaphiophobia

There’s a strange comfort in returning to the work you once set down—almost like finding an old jacket that still smells faintly of beer, static, and the concrete hallways of who you used to be. For Deaf Locust, the moniker behind NJ musician and composer Brian Gawaski (aka Ciem), that return wasn’t planned. It unfolded slowly, as if creativity had been sleeping under ash for twelve years, waiting for a crack of light. But with Kakorrhaphiophobia, his first release in over a decade, that spark doesn’t feel timid. It feels lived-in, sharpened, and a little dangerous in the way only long-buried instincts can be.

What hits first in the single is the way the sound bends—not aggressively, but with a quiet insistence that refuses to stay in a single lane. Brian calls his style “prog-adjacent alternative rock,” though the edges smear into retro pop shimmer, post-punk grit, and a dark cinematic undercurrent that moves like shadows crossing a movie screen. The music doesn’t chase polish; it chases feeling. There’s tension in the way the chords climb and crack, the way the vocals hover like a memory you’re trying not to revisit. It’s rock, yes, but melted down and re-cast into something stranger, something that crawls under the ribcage.

Part of the gravity comes from the long creative silence that shaped it. Back in 2010, Brian released Lifelike Scenes under The Ciem Show—an experimental prog-metal fever dream that earned respect in niche circles. Then everything went quiet. Life took over. Inspiration vanished. The hero’s journey stalled somewhere in the woods, no map, no visible exit. But in 2022, small ideas began tapping on the door again. Not grand ideas, not the fireworks of his early years—just embers. A melody line. A rhythm scraping against the inside of his head. The slow, stubborn return of a voice he thought he’d outgrown.

That rebirth is woven into Kakorrhaphiophobia. You can hear it in the pacing—irregular, breathless in places, then suddenly steady as if Brian is relearning how to trust his own instincts. The production leans into atmosphere over complexity, letting texture do the heavy lifting. Static crackles. Guitars stretch like old elastic. Percussion lands with the blunt honesty of concrete. It’s cinematic not because it tries to be, but because Brian treats every second like a frame from an internal film only he’s seen. Listeners get to feel it without needing to decode it.

There’s also a gentleness underlying the darkness. Not softness—gentleness, the kind that comes from someone who’s wrestled with their own fear of failure long enough to name it outright. Kakorrhaphiophobia—the fear of defeat—makes a fitting banner for a creator returning after ten long years of silence. Instead of masking it, Brian lets the theme bleed into the structure, into the way the melody folds back on itself, into the way the vocals sometimes sound like they’re stepping on cracked glass. It’s vulnerable work dressed in rock’s familiar armor.

What makes Deaf Locust resonate isn’t just the sonics, though—they’re compelling, sure, but what lingers is the intent. Brian isn’t trying to re-enter the music world with a glossy reinvention. He’s showing up exactly as he is now: older, heavier with experience, clearer in his artistic direction, and willing to build connection through imperfection. His visuals reflect that same ethos—shadowed tones, hints of retro grain, a deliberate pull toward things that feel physical, tactile, a little weathered. Like holding something that still carries yesterday’s heat.

And as Kakorrhaphiophobia leads into the full EP arriving November 5, 2025, you sense the broader arc unfolding—the creative resurgence, the forward momentum, the acceptance that uncertainty isn’t something to conquer but something to walk alongside. Deaf Locust isn’t a comeback story wrapped in glitter. It’s a continuation story—raw, deliberate, and quietly triumphant. Art, after all, bends toward the artist’s truth, and Brian’s truth finally has its volume back.

Beneath the Concrete, the Ember Still Breathes

Highroad No. 28 was never a band to make grand exits; they just quietly turned into the background static. Back in the early 2000s, their shows were the kind of nights where the floor was sticky and soaked in beer, and people were clinging to the rail like they were indulging in something greater than simply sound. Then life happened. Years piled on each other like repurposed slabs of concrete, with subsequent years weighing heavier than the last one, and the band faded into the in-between. So when “Ache” came out—trembling, cinematic, almost respirating—it felt less like a return to form than someone striking a match in a completely abandoned school classroom. A soft flame, not as interested in burning as it was just burning.

“Ache” begins like a memory you can’t quite catch up to again. The guitars do not rush us; they stalk. The bass hangs low and heavy, slightly dark, the kind you feel in the ribs as a comforting pulse. And when the voices break through, raw and cracked in parts, it does not tell a story, so much as it is confessing a story. There is an earnestness toward emotional honesty that only time, distance, and a decade of quiet self-sloughing can teach you. It is a voice sounding the truths to everyone, at last, the things they didn’t have the chance to say when everything was louder.

It's fascinating how the band returns to their old DNA, without falling into nostalgia. You can still hear that relentless backbone of “never-give-in” fire that compelled the music of Obscure Madness and Dynamic Introspection, and while they are still present, the edges are more like dark shades assisted with purpose. Recorded at Sing Sing Studios and influenced by the keenness and new experience of James Taplin, “Ache” feels hand-made – like old film grain cut clearly with a modern edge. It possesses that ambiguous contradiction of being familiar, but distinctly different.

In both substance and form, the band has always played with despair and resilience, and while it has themes of both, the contrasts have been sharpened. Within the track, you can hear the Hero's Journey—departure, descent, and that tentative, almost unwilling return. You hear the years in the sound, the pauses, the rebuild. The lyrics are textured like concrete and ash, like they are attempting to rebuild a home with those materials, and somehow, it works. The emotional stakes seem higher, and while the band no longer plays from the adrenaline of youth, they play it from the experience of lived experience.

Their listeners, the ones that made it through the portion of silence, will notice the change right away. “Ache” is not meant to be listened to passively; it wants to be held, contemplated and perhaps listened to again at 2 a.m., with a warm beer and the half-open window letting the rustle of the city creep in. It is intimate in ways the band perhaps never let themselves be (before)—less theatrical, more personal. You feel them directly next to you, almost shoulder-to-shoulder with the listener, introducing the vulnerability of the situation to speak for itself.

And this is only the first chapter. The Will to Endure, due out late December 2025, aims to go even deeper to the end of the pool—darker, heavier, intentional. The band has taken some time to hint at the greater scope: layered instinctive melodies, brain-melting vocal work, bombastic driven instrumentation. Given their history—following the heavy grit of Unsteady and Steady State, the atmospheric tension of Stumbling to Divinity—this new direction feels like a relaxed escalation, not a dislodged broken-down canoe in a crowded ocean. Endurance has always been their thesis.

At this moment, while they prepare for their first live shows in over ten years, Highroad No. 28 is at a weird crossroads of renewal and reckoning. "Ache" is their hand held back out to the world—a reminder that some fires don't go out, they just become quiet and exist beneath the concrete until someone brushes away the ash. And when they get back on the stage again, the story will not be that of a band returning. The narrative will be that of a band surviving.

“Love 2 Love You”: The Home-Recorded Anthem That Feels Like Finding Light After Rock Bottom

Pearl Project does not push "Love 2 Love You" as a single, really. It arrives more like a soft pulse from a lived memory - warm, and a litle dust (static) on the edges, like something scibbled when collapsing and rebuild at a kitchen table that still smells of coffee from the day and leftover beer from the night before. The piece originated as a poem, a personal artifact kept nearby during one of their darkest chapters. The poem's origin leaves texture on every moment of the track. You can hear it when the vocal moves forward, not polished and clean but human, as though the words are still warm from the page.

The song was fully recorded from home at Stampersgat, and it carries the subtle assurance of concrete floors, some blankets that don’t match, and a microphone that has probably recorded more tears than any studio booth ever attempted to. The environment is important. It steals the gloss away; it brings raw fidelity where formal perplexity once was: tiny breaths, the hum of the room, a soft rasp from the ash in the harmonies. Pearl Project does not seek to be artificially perfect; it pursues emotional truth, and they hope to do that in a market where authenticity is the distinctive marker, not brilliant mediocrity.

"Love 2 Love You" operates like the middle of a Hero's Journey—immediately after the fall, and right before the climb. There is a moment in the song where the melodies seem to take a breath, suspended in a gossamer moment, just before despair, hovering in the very moment the seeds of hope begin to grow. It's not grand and cinematic. It's intimate, quiet. A worthy (or articulation of an existing) turning point that listeners don't just hear—they recognize, because they have lived their version of it. That is the leverage Pearl Project uses to great effect: resonance. Connection to reality over algorithmic targeting.

Incorporating a female vocalist, who the artist had been searching for years, creates another level of emotional architecture on the piece. Her voice glints through the song's texture like the static on an ancient radio; something soft and grounding that provides contrast to Pearl Project's self-reflection style. In contrast, this pairing gives you a presence heavy enough to touch, as if you're breathing the air that the song is creating. There's something to explore in in the ways that these voices touch: Rough meets smooth; grief meets grace. It strikes you as a type of sonic chemistry that is not forced, only discovered.

What separates the single is not merely its story, but the ability to convey that story through sound. Listeners are already relaying that the words "made an impact," a simple, yet ultimately powerful metric in an industry worth only conversions and click-through rates. Impact is much more difficult to create than that, and yet here it feels organic. Could it be from the homegrown feel, the emotional nakedness, or maybe Pearl Project didn't try to be influenced by anything at all. The song stands on its feet, bare, a little bruised, but on its feet.

While the track moves through the world, Pearl Project operates behind the scenes: no shows planned, no fancy new project announcement, no lead-up marketing effort at all. Instead, the goal is intimacy. Let the song find its ways to people through word of mouth, promo from playlist curators, and listeners who want authentic connection amidst manufactured style. “Love 2 Love You” is presented as a slow-burn proposition--high emotional return with low pretentiousness, meant to rest in the listener's body.

And maybe that's the real magic here. A poem that had been trapped in darkness is now transformed into song that carries light. Pearl Project connects past with the present, pain with potential, stasis with clarity. The track never promises to save the world--there is no save the world from an honest approach--it just reminds you that resilience can nestle in softness, and hope starts with an act of barely-there whispering in the warmth of your own home.