REVIEW: Your Spirit Dies - My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest

In a genre built on catharsis, defiance, and emotional bloodletting, My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest feels less like an album and more like an exorcism. The full-length debut from South Carolina’s Your Spirit Dies is a visceral, unflinching dive into pain - personal, spiritual, and generational. But more than just a collection of breakdowns and blast beats, it’s a bold mission statement from a band that refuses to be buried by the expectations of their origin, scene, or past.

From the opening seconds of 'Trenches of Pain', it’s clear the group has found a brutal clarity. Brandon Byars’ voice is a weathered, furious instrument, alternating between unhinged bellows and ragged spoken passages that linger like scars. Tyler Dorman and Holden Hall’s guitars don’t just riff - they spiral, screech, and collapse, merging classic metalcore crunch with blackened tremolo picking and eerie atmospheric textures. Backed by Keagan McChesney’s thunderous bass and Brannon Crumpton’s airtight drumming, the band’s sound is somewhere between Trustkill-era chaos and a funeral procession through hell.

That foundation gives way to some truly standout moments. 'Serpentine', featuring Zao’s legendary Dan Weyandt, is a venomous diatribe aimed squarely at the narcissists in our lives. Weyandt’s unmistakable howl meshes seamlessly with Brandon’s unfiltered delivery, making the track feel like a cursed sermon being shouted from opposite ends of a collapsing cathedral. The breakdown hits like a betrayal, and the lyrics sting just as sharply.

On 'In The Depths of Grief', the emotional weight becomes almost suffocating. Written in part about Brandon’s aging mother and the quiet dread of watching loved ones fade, the song melds melodic dissonance with earth-shaking heaviness. It’s deeply personal without ever slipping into melodrama - just raw, unprocessed hurt delivered with conviction. “You will die alone”, he growls at one point, and it doesn’t sound like a threat. It sounds like a truth we try not to name.

Throughout the record, Your Spirit Dies flirt with a broad palette of influences without ever diluting their core aggression. There’s the melodic finesse of Killswitch Engage, the grimy chaos of Napalm Death, and the ominous noise-laced textures of Godflesh. But it’s not just the music that carries cinematic weight. Giallo horror samples, including The Beyond and even screams from MaXXXine’s Mia Goth, are stitched into the seams of the album, adding a surreal, nightmarish texture that heightens the tension without becoming gimmicky.

'Unjust God' might be the band’s boldest artistic leap. A slow-burning, black metal-tinged reflection on faith, suffering, and religious trauma, the track simmers with rage before erupting into a haunting clean chorus. It’s not an anti-religion rant so much as a cry for understanding in a world that often feels designed to break you. “I stare into the eyes of an unjust god”, Brandon confesses, and the conviction in his voice is chilling.

Carson Pace of The Callous Daoboys injects his signature chaos into 'Night Pierces My Bones', pushing the track to a fever pitch, while Blaythe Steuer of No Cure joins the fray on 'A Snow in Summer', a song that delivers a nihilistic verdict on the human race: “We ruin everything”. It’s as scathing as it is infectious. Closing the album is 'An Effigy of Failure', a reimagined early track that now sounds like a declaration. The band has levelled up since its original incarnation, and here, the song’s mix of fury and finality feels earned. “Life on earth is a living hell, and I fear death no longer”, Brandon screams - less as a lament, more as a liberation.

What makes My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest stand out isn’t just its technical prowess or guest features - it’s the sense of real human struggle bleeding through every second. This is a band of Southern kids who weren’t 'supposed' to make it, who clawed their way out of the cracks, and whose music doesn’t shy away from ugliness, grief, or doubt. And yet, somehow, it’s still affirming. Still cathartic. Still hopeful, if only in the sense that screaming your truth out loud is better than swallowing it. In a landscape where so much metalcore can feel plastic or performative, Your Spirit Dies delivers something terrifyingly real.

Score: 9/10

My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest will be released on May 2nd 2025 via MNRK Heavy.

Words: Jason De Mendonca

Photos: Your Spirit Dies