REVIEW: False Reality - Faded Intentions

London’s FALSE REALITY are not a band interested in half-measures. Since their formation in 2023, they’ve become one of the city’s most explosive live forces. Their upcoming debut album, Faded Intentions, is a record that finds clarity through chaos, shaped by years of immersion in the scene and unafraid to rip up its rulebook. Pulling together threads of every corner of the alternative ecosystem, from beatdown and thrash, to grunge and even shoegaze, hardcore rarely feels this cinematic.

Speaking of cinema, the album opens not with intense vocals or instrumentals, but with a century-old voice. Taylor Holmes’ 1915 reading of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Boots’, the same version used in trailers for ‘28 Years Later’, rattles through distortion like a ghostly transmission. It’s a clever move: part homage, part horror, part warning. Then, before you’ve quite adjusted, a scream tears through - “FALSE REALITY’s back!” - and the record detonates. From there, Frozen sets the tone for the record’s balance between precision and atmosphere. Its serrated riffs hit with the speed and tightness of early thrash, but underneath sits a hazy melodic pull that hints at those shoegaze and grunge influences the band weave through the chaos. Vocalist RACHEL RIGBY’s performance is commanding and venomous, yet somehow measured, her delivery twisting from barked syllables to full-bodied roars that never lose clarity.

The record’s midsection digs into its darker, more disorienting terrain. Reality Slips, arriving as the fifth track, plays like a turning point. Its driving rhythm and dissociative chorus capture that push and pull between control and collapse. RIGBY’s voice cuts through the mix with both power and precision, her phrasing slipping between exhaustion, accusation, and something close to despair. The track is heavy but hypnotic, as if the ground is giving way beneath it. Then, Sonder changes the temperature completely. Drenched in distortion and reverb, it turns shoegaze textures into something meditative and eerie - proof that FALSE REALITY can stretch their sound without losing focus.

When Out Of Time hits, the band reassert their aggression. Guitarist DAVE CONNOLLY channels the ferocity of early METALLICA and SLAYER, but keeps it contemporary with clean, dynamic transitions. The rhythm section, delivered by JOE CORNWELL and LOUIS DALE, gives the record its propulsion; they know exactly when to leave space and when to pile on, and this track showcases that beautifully. By Worth It, RIGBY is at her most emotionally exposed. “I’ve watched you burn a thousand times in my head, I’ve prayed for your downfall, prayed for the end,” she screams, the line sounding both like a confession and exorcism.

Faded Intentions closes its final act with two of its most potent statements. Cost Of Spite hits near the end of the tracklist, and it’s one of the album’s fiercest moments. The crushing breakdown and spat lyrics aren’t just aggression, they’re defiance written from frustration with how effort and identity are still too often judged through gender, race, or sexuality. Then, the last track, Every Gaze, pushes that rage inwards again, landing somewhere closer to revelation than release. By these closing moments, Faded Intentions has revealed itself as more than just a debut. It’s a statement of identity from a band that knows exactly where they come from and where they plan to go, with each track feeling like a different response to disillusionment. Taking us through anger, grief, defiance, and numbness, we see an undeniable emotional intelligence beneath the noise, and the recognition that catharsis doesn’t mean closure.

RIGBY’s vocals are the album’s beating heart. She doesn’t just front the songs, she inhabits them. Her delivery swings from snarled lines that border on spoken word to guttural howls that sound physically ripped from her throat. There’s real technique in her control, but what makes her performance so powerful is how unfiltered it feels. In a scene that’s still largely male-dominated, her presence hits with extra weight. Hardcore has always been about community yet it still struggles with inclusivity, and RIGBY’s voice cuts straight through that contradiction, reshaping what strength sounds like.

There’s a sharp self-awareness to everything FALSE REALITY do. The lyrics circle around betrayal, disillusionment, and transformation, but the record’s real subject is perception itself: what’s real, what’s constructed, what happens when the line between the two disappears. The band’s imagery plays with those same ideas: the blue screen album art, the layered textures, even the name FALSE REALITY. It all works toward a single point of tension - how do you hold onto authenticity when the world keeps distorting the picture?

It’s tempting to call this record a reinvention of hardcore, but in all honesty that undersells what it achieves. Faded Intentions feels more like an expansion of sound, of perspective, of who gets to hold the microphone. FALSE REALITY have delivered a record that doesn’t just speak to the present moment but redefines it, transforming personal fury into something collective and unmistakably alive.

Score: 9/10

Faded Intentions will be released on November 14th 2025 via Hassle Records.

Words: Zuzanna Pazola

Photos: Rachell Smith