The Armed – ‘The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed’ album review: Eclectic, expansive, and headache-inducing
“This is just noise” was a phrase I heard a lot throughout my childhood and adolescence. It was the way that my mother would describe any kind of half-decent heavy rock, punk, or hardcore music. Imagine the existential crisis that ensued for me, then, upon listening to the latest offering by hardcore collective The Armed, and having virtually the same reaction.
Centred around a home base of Detroit, Michigan, The Armed have been around in some form or another since 2009, with an ultimately unknown number of musicians passing through the group over the course of the past 16 years. The catchily named The Future Is Here and Everything Needs to Be Destroyed is the band’s first album release in two years, and it largely continues the genre-defying, endlessly expansive sound with which the group have dealt since their earliest days.
Undoubtedly, the dedicated following that The Armed has amassed thus far will find a lot to enjoy on this new record. Taking on an overwhelming number of different sounds and influences over the course of the track listing, spanning the range from metalcore to post-industrial, nobody can accuse the record of being overly simplistic or run-of-the-mill. ‘Yawn, it’s another of those eclectic post-hardcore/industrial/experimental/metalcore records that everybody is releasing right now’ is not a sentence that could truthfully be uttered by anybody.
Still, the album’s breadth of sound is headache-inducing at multiple points throughout the runtime. Even as a dedicated fan of hardcore and post-hardcore music, it was very difficult to listen to this record through in one go; there is simply too much going on. For much of the album, that wall of abrasion is coupled with perpetually screeching vocals, present right from the opener ‘Well Made Play’, so there is rarely – if ever – a chance to fully absorb or appreciate what you are hearing. It’s akin to being sonically assaulted.
As a result, some of the mellower, slightly more subdued efforts on the album form the main highlights. ‘I Steal What I Want’, for instance, feels far more considered and well put-together, both in terms of the composition itself and the production, spearheaded by long-term collaborator Ben Chisholm. In fact, the second half of the record has multiple truly enjoyable moments, with ‘Heathen’ being another notable highlight. It is just a struggle to get to those tracks, fighting through the first half of the record.
A notable highlight: ‘I Steal What I Want’
For fans of: Irreversible hearing loss, those videos of people getting punched in hardcore pits, and droning on endlessly about ‘the culture’ of the scene.
A concluding comment from Ben’s mother: “Now this really is just noise, I apologise to every other record I said that about.”
Release date: August 1st, 2025 | Producer: Ben Chisholm, The Armed | Label: Sargent House
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