Los Angeles-based screamo revivalists Knumears have announced their long-awaited debut album Directions, set for release on 3rd April. Alongside the announcement, the trio have shared a powerful new single, Fade Away, featuring guest vocals from Jeff Smith of genre pioneers Jeromes Dream.
Knumears
Directions captures Knumears at their most urgent and emotionally exposed, channelling the raw intensity that has long defined screamo while pushing the sound forward with renewed purpose. Fade Away serves as a striking introduction, swinging between crushing ferocity and aching vulnerability as Matthew Cole and Dante Garcia II trade visceral vocal lines before Smith’s unmistakable scream detonates the track’s final moments. The song distils everything that defines Knumears: chaos, catharsis and an unfiltered emotional release.
Formed in 2021, Knumears — Cole (guitar/vocals), Garcia II (bass/vocals) and Frankie Lopez (drums) — have steadily built momentum through relentless touring and a growing catalogue of intensely personal releases. Rooted in the lineage of ’90s hardcore and screamo, the band approach the genre not as a revivalist exercise, but as a living, breathing form of expression. Recorded with Jack Shirley at Atomic Garden, Directions brims with immediacy, capturing the band at a creative crossroads as they navigate the transition from adolescence into adulthood.
Lyrically, Directions explores love, growth, loss and identity through a broad and deeply personal lens. Cole’s writing strips emotion down to its rawest form, touching on family bonds, formative relationships and the confusion that comes with change. Tracks such as One Light, Sunshine, Breaking Ground and Friendly Face reflect on these themes with sparse yet evocative language, while the band’s explosive dynamics amplify every sentiment.
The album stands as both a love letter to screamo’s past and a blueprint for its future. By embracing the genre’s defining traits — extreme contrasts, emotional honesty and sheer volume — Knumears reaffirm why this corner of hardcore continues to resonate decades on. Directions is less about nostalgia and more about necessity: music made because it has to be, not because it’s fashionable.
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