Knumears announce debut album Directions due out 3rd April via Run For Cover Records / Summer Shade
Share new song “Fade Away”
feat. Jeromes Dream vocalist Jeff Smith
Knumears by Kara Aguilera
Rising screamo revivalists, Knumears, recently joined Run For Cover Records and Summer Shade (the RFC imprint spearheaded by Fury’s Madison Woodward), and today the Los Angeles-based three-piece have announced their debut album, Directions.
Arriving 3rd April, Directions is a screamo tour de force that reinvigorates the genre through sheer passion. Lead single “Fade Away” encapsulates Knumears‘ wildly swinging dynamics, crushing ferocity, and unabashed vulnerability, along with guest vocals from Jeff Smith of skramz legends, Jeromes Dream. It’s an extremely satisfying blend of the genre’s pioneering past and bright future-and the perfect introduction to Knumears.
Listen to “Fade Away” via YouTube HERE
Stream “Fade Away” everywhere HERE
Pre-order Directions HERE
Since their formation Knumears (guitarist/
Watch the lyric video for “Fade Away” directed by Gabe Herrera here.
Directions album artwork
Directions is due out 3rd April via Run For Cover Records and Summer Shade. Digital downloads are available for review and the band is available for interviews.
Directions track list:
1. Introduction
2. One Light, Sunshine
3. My Name
4. Breaking Ground
5. Directions
6. Untitled
7. Bridged
8. Fade Away
9. Friendly Face
10. The North
Upcoming Shows:
24/01 Philadelphia, PA @ New Harmony Festival
12/02 San Francisco, CA @ Noise Pop Festival
Biography:
Knumears understand that they don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re part of a sonic tradition that’s been evolving for decades: call it screamo, skramz, post-hardcore, call it anything you want, but it can only be carried on by those who truly love it. The band’s debut album, Directions, is equal parts love letter and cartography project, exploring the genre from its roots in hardcore to the contemporary scene bubbling up on the West Coast, and even contributing to a blueprint for a new generation of screamo fanatics. But perhaps most importantly, Directions–like many of the genre’s best releases–is simply about young musicians expressing themselves through some of the most explosively cathartic music imaginable.
For the first five years they’ve been a band, the only constant for Knumears has been movement. Since their inception in 2021, bassist Dante Garcia II, drummer Frankie Lopez, and vocalist/guitarist Matthew Cole have gone from playing packed local shows with kids screaming, climbing, shouting and dancing, to touring nationally and finding the same fervour and impassioned reactions at venues all across the country. Outside of that chaos, the group found themselves at a crossroads in their own lives. They were discovering new relationships, cultivating their personal worlds, and learning to navigate the space between youth and adulthood–all while trying to find the time to forge their debut album.
“We were all struggling very much creatively when trying to write this album,” explains Cole. “We have several projects outside of Knumears [like vs self, Elm, and Bettin Horses] and I think exploring music that wasn’t necessarily about aggression helped clear some blocks–getting all of the ‘fun’ music out of the way so that we could focus on something deeper that leaves it all on the table.” With studio time on the books with legendary producer/engineer Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Joyce Manor, Touche Amore) the band’s writing process suddenly kicked into gear. “A few weeks before our time with Jack, we sat down and basically wrote the whole record. It practically was flowing out of us,” says Cole.
The result is an album that sounds as urgent and immediate as the feelings it explores. Directions is steeped in the confusion of exiting adolescence and bracing for what’s next, the challenge of deciding what parts of life will stay with you and what might be left behind. Tracks like “One Light, Sunshine” or “Breaking Ground” delve into this kind of growth and the bonds that help foster it. Cole’s penmanship is sparse yet evocative, and intensely delivered alongside his caterwauling guitar riffs, Garcia’s distorted bass, and Lopez’s acrobatic drumming. “Lyrically I dug deep into the familial aspect of love and hardships,” Cole explains. “When most people think of a love song I think they have such a narrow headspace about it. Your one true love could be your grandma or your best friend, not just a significant other. I wanted to kind of focus on that with these lyrics. A lot of them are about my dad and my grandmother, who both shape my creativity a lot.”
On late album standout “Friendly Face” Cole howls “take me with you, we’ll watch the clouds / Each shape forming a different sound / Lay with me upon a bed of green, we’ll see things that only we can see” referring to the influence of his grandmother with his love for her emanating from the speakers alongside some of the album’s most pummeling instrumentals. “Those lyrics are really personal to me,” he says. “Whenever I’m lost or don’t really know who I’m supposed to be, I just think of my childhood and the people that helped me grow.”
Throughout Directions, Knumears manage to take classic screamo tropes–the wildly swinging dynamics, the crushing ferocity, the unabashed vulnerability–and reinvigorate them through sheer force of will. “The early screamo bands are special because they didn’t have pre-existing bands to try and sound like,” says Cole. “They were screaming because they needed to not because it was cool.” This appreciation for the genre’s forebears is built into the incendiary lead single “Fade Away,” which features a guest appearance from Jerome’s Dream frontman Jeff Smith. The song’s panicked opening riff gives way to a propulsive snare roll, exploding into a full-band attack as Smith’s unhinged voice rips through the finale.
In the end, Knumears’ ability to encapsulate so much of what’s made screamo exciting and enduring simply comes down to the passion that’s so intrinsic to the genre itself. “I think what draws us to this music, just like everyone else, is the absolute raw emotion,” says Cole. “ In this kind of music people can really write about whatever they want, whether it’s being super angry, super sad, super happy– all of it has something in common, and that’s feeling so strongly about it that all they can do is scream.”