When you see the “hardcore” tag on a new release, it stands to reason that you’ll be in store for something bleak, pleading, and emotionally scorched or despondent.
Well, “You Don’t Have to Worry” – the newest offering from OKC hardcore veterans Naturalist, and their first full album in some eight years – definitely makes good on all the bleakness and despair, but there’s something else at play throughout, as well.
There’s no shortage here of distorted, brick-wall guitars and seething, soul-crushing hardcore screaming, but while the sounds bear all the scars and hallmarks of isolation and retreat, the words – and indeed the general sentiments across the album – remain surprisingly fixed on the plea for community.
True to its title, much of “You Don’t Have to Worry” is an outstretched hand, both an offering of support for those in the pits and a cry for help from down among them at the same time.
Singer/screamer/lyricist Ashton Prescott imbues each track with what at first feels like an “abandon all hope” ethos, lamenting the losses of love, family, and even of life and the world itself, but there are shafts of light – or at least of effort – breaking through all the darkness.
The track “Good Man” offers “the ocean is far more accepting of those that are willing to drown.”
Is he one of the willing or is he struggling to not be taken under? The answer may well be in the title track that follows, an anthem of lending a hand even when you need one yourself, all anchored by a massive group vocal. It’s a beautifully earnest and straightforward moment of friendship and maybe even a celebration of community while everything else is burning down.
This style is so often reserved for wallowing in the depths of exploited depression and inconsolable hopelessness, but this whole album is about the innate need to reach out and about desperately leaning on the friends and familiars around you when the world gets swept away, sometimes literally.
It’s an angle driven home just by looking over the album’s tracklist, which includes three separate songs openly featuring guests, friends, and hardcore peers like Tuck O’Leary, Chizzy Webster, and Matthew Ryan Smith.
And that’s even before the consistent inclusion throughout of synths and sequencing by Oklahoma scene mainstay (and human swiss army knife) Cole Horton of So Much Heaven, And in the Darkness I was Free, and the sadly defunct Tiger Lily.
Those elements bring a defiantly communal, us-against-the-world attitude to the record, as well as a load of welcome atmosphere and electronic texture that elevates the whole thing beyond the simple touchstones of the genre.
But that’s definitely not to say that any of those touchstones are forgotten.
This is powerful music, full of fire-breathing intensity and post-metal moments of time signature trickery, with Hunter Amos’ jagged-edged guitars, crushing drumming from Micah Patrick — who also plays in Prescott’s Terrible Thieves — and the fluid, acrobatically composed playing of Tyler Sanchez, whose basslines remain a persistent standout across the album.
Each and every one of those elements — the band’s musical ferocity, the wide dynamics, the ominous atmospheres, and that pleading need for support and understanding from someone or something beyond — all come together on the epic, penultimate “05202013”.
If those numbers don’t immediately mean anything to you, then you don’t come from Moore, like both Prescott and me.
That title is the date 05/20/2013, when a historically monstrous tornado laid waste and devastation to much of Moore, just as it shredded the nerves and shook the faiths of all of the city’s residents.
I was there and I was one of them, so I can not only attest to the accuracy of the horror and life-altering aftermath that the song lays out, but I can also confirm the psychological devastation that followed and the need to once again lean desperately against whatever was left standing.
This whole album, then, may well be a statement that real community is not about family, which can fall apart and disown you. It’s not about a place or a city, which can be blown away in a matter of minutes. It’s not about a faith or a religion that can abandon you when you’re crying out for it most.
Community is just the friends around you that will help to sing your songs, help to find the words when you can’t, and help to remind you, no matter how dark things get, that you really don’t have to worry.
“You Don’t Have to Worry” by Naturalist is available on streaming services everywhere now from Friend Club Records. For more, visit naturalistmusic.bandcamp.com and follow @naturalistmusic on Instagram.
You can find out about local music and performance happenings in the OKC metro weekly in this music column by Brett Fieldcamp. | Brought to you by True Sky Credit Union.
Brett Fieldcamp has been covering arts, entertainment, news, housing, and culture in Oklahoma for nearly 15 years, writing for several local and state publications. He’s also a musician and songwriter and holds a certification as Specialist of Spirits from The Society of Wine Educators.
