Only a few bands have remained as consistently compelling in the modern alternative scene as Abrams. Over the years, we’ve covered the Denver quartet repeatedly through our channels, following their evolution through today’s heavy rock landscape. With ‘Loon’, the quartet does not simply refine their formula — they sharpen it into something far more aggressive and urgent.
Released via Blues Funeral Recordings (Domkraft, Elder, Lowrider…), following 2024’s acclaimed album ‘Blue City’, ‘Loon’ captures a band operating at full intensity and pushes the band deeper into darker and heavier territory without sacrificing immediacy or impact. Born from societal fracture, exhaustion and mounting tension, the album channels frustration into a volatile collision of crushing heaviness, abrasive noise and towering melody.
From the explosive opening of “Glass House”, Abrams make their intentions painfully clear. The riffs hit harder, the rhythms feel more unstable, and the emotional delivery borders on combustion. Rather than drifting toward safer or more accessible territory, the band double down on aggression, dissonance and sheer physical impact.
Tracks like “Remains” embody that transformation perfectly. Blast-beats crash beneath suffocating guitars while massive choruses erupt with desperate urgency. Yet Abrams never abandon melody entirely. The strength of ‘Loon’ lies in its constant tension between beauty and abrasion: dreamlike atmospheres dissolve into sludge-soaked chaos, while soaring hooks are dragged through walls of distortion. Even tracks like “Waves” and “Sirens” carry a lingering sense of exhaustion and rage beneath their melodic surface.
Abrams continue to thrive within the space between alternative-rock, shoegaze, post-hardcore, grunge and sludge without ever sounding trapped by genre, Somewhere between Cave In, Helmet, Hum, Torche or Quicksand, the band remain unmistakably themselves: emotionally exposed, instinctively hook-driven and fueled by controlled chaos and delivers as result, a dense, cathartic and fiercely alive album from a band refusing complacency.
‘Loon’ does not sound like Abrams settling into maturity. It sounds like them kicking the door down harder than ever.
