“The early screamo bands are special because they didn’t have preexisting bands to try and sound like,” Knumears guitarist/vocalist Matthew Cole says. “They were screaming because they needed to, not because it was cool.” For their debut album, Directions, the SoCal trio took that blueprint and ran with it, using the desire for release to fuel their work.
Recorded by Jack Shirley (Deafheaven, Gouge Away), Knumears build out an entire world of metallic, highly emotional screamo that destroys basements while weaving in effects worthy of Orchid or Jeromes Dream — the latter of which features on “Fade Away.” Song by song, Knumears split the difference between chaos and craft, letting out guttural shrieks just as freely as allowing atmospheric textures or dense rhythm to take the lead. In the process, they exhale a spectrum of emotions — from hope to despair to the heartache of existence — that gives the project complexity and importance. No matter where your tastes lie, Directions is the kind of album that could bridge fans of screamo’s various generations.
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“What draws us to this type of music, just like everyone else, is the absolute raw emotion,” Cole adds. “We all grew up listening to hardcore, and I think that allows you to see the world in a completely different light — both more creatively and intellectually. Not being raised on music that had nothing real to say was the best thing that happened to us.”
Just in time for release day, the band guided us through every song on Directions. They’ll celebrate the album on Sunday (April 5) with a release show at Lodge Room in LA, supported by their friends in Train Breaks Down.
“Introduction”
We knew we wanted to open the record with something that was heavy and suspenseful. A few years back, we played with Massa Nera and watched them open their set with the song “Bloated” and immediately knew we wanted to emulate the same feeling. The song came together fairly easily, considering the whole thing is three notes. The dynamics were what we wanted to focus on the most. Have a somewhat serene landscape-like opening going into as claustrophobic a sound as possible.
“One Light, Sunshine”
“One Light, Sunshine” immediately came after “Introduction.” Being avid listeners of vinyl, we think it’s really cool when songs flow perfectly on a record, so we tried our hand at that. We went through two different versions of this song, testing both of them out live. We played our first version on a run with Jeromes Dream, but it didn’t feel right. After we got back from the tour, we sat back down and rewrote the second half of the song. I kind of look at this song as two separate songs. “One Light” being opening half, and “Sunshine” being from the drum break on.
“My Name”
“My Name” was a song that just wrote itself. I had come to practice with an idea of a riff that I hummed into my Voice Memos on the drive there. When we got to practice, I figured out the riff, and everything just came together. A few weeks prior, I had written some lyrics down, hoping to eventually write a song that they fit, and luckily this was the one. My favorite part of this song is the end when the two vocals are battling one another. We had our friend Griffin write his own verse that he thought was fitting for the song and had him hop on.
“Breaking Ground”
“Breaking Ground” was one of the last songs we wrote for this record, but I think our collective favorite. We usually tend to write a song and then immediately play it at the next show before we give it our complete stamp of approval, but this song was different. Writing this song felt a little more special to all of us, I think. As soon as we were finished at practice, we were satisfied with the outcome. I wrote the lyrics to this song about 10 minutes before I recorded them, but they turned out to be my favorite words I’ve written thus far.
“Directions”
We wrote this song in the studio with the help of Jack Shirley. It took a decent amount of experimenting to find cool tones and sounds. Dante started playing the Rhodes and came up with the main melody. The guitar part is just a slowed-down version of the ending riff of the record. I used my EHX Holy Grail with the hall setting as high as possible. The biggest struggle of this song was the drums. Nothing at the time seemed quite fitting, and hitting the downbeats at the perfect time took a few tries because, frankly, none of it is in time.
“Untitled”
This is the first song we had written for this record about three years ago. It was the first time we ever tuned down from standard, and we never looked back. We released this song on a split with Clay Birds in 2023, but knew from the start that it was going to go on our next record. This is one of our favorite songs to play live because it feels like the energy is there from the jump, and having a pretty obnoxious breakdown at the end helps, too.
“Bridged”
“Bridged” is another song that we released prior to recording the record. It was originally on a four-way split with Vs Self, Party Hats, and Catalyst. We originally recorded this song at Dante’s parents’ house in about an hour. We were on a time crunch because I had to go to work, so it didn’t turn out as good as we were hoping for initially. When we play this song live, we always play it after “Untitled” with the transition between the two songs being the same as how we recorded it. This is the first song that really garnered my love for feedback.
“Fade Away”
This was the most difficult song to write on this record. I came to practice with the opening riff but had absolutely no clue how to continue it. I tried to convince Frankie that we should just scrap it, but thankfully, he didn’t let us. Getting Jeff [Smith] from Jeromes Dream to do vocals on this song was pretty surreal. I think it’s fairly obvious that we took a lot of inspiration for this song from early JD, and when writing the lyrics, I knew that I wanted Jeff to have a part on it. Going on tour with JD built a good relationship between all of us, and both of us recording with Jack Shirley made it feasible. It did take a decent amount of convincing, but in the end, it turned out to be one of the coolest things to happen to us.
“Friendly Face”
We deliberately tried to write this song sort of verse, chorus, verse, chorus-y. We tend to write songs in sections that don’t often repeat, but this riff seemed fitting to repeat. We finished writing this song the night before a show and decided that it would be a good idea to play this song at the show. It did not go well. We kept messing up, and I didn’t have any lyrics, so I was just making noises into the mic. We went back to the song a few days later and polished it up, and it turned out to be one of my favorites that we’ve written.
“The North”
This song came together very quickly, and we knew that it was going to be the ender. We all like it when albums feel relieved at the end, and I think that this song gave us that feeling. This is the most direct love song that I’ve written, so it felt fitting to conclude a record that holds a lot of other weighted emotions with the strongest one.
