Review & Full Album Premiere: Arsis Thesis, Ustanak
Houston duo Arsis Thesis release their debut album, Ustanak, this Friday, July 31. The band is comprised of brothers Nick Blevins (guitar/vocals) and Jake Blevins (drums/vocals), whose debut EP, Pangea came out in 2019 and who here present six songs across 40 minutes of post-hardcore-informed, impact-centered heavy rock and roll. There’s some aspect of Midwestern emo, but you can also hear some (early) Clutch in “Capricorn,” and the lines between microgenres are imaginary anyway. Big riffs complemented by mostly shouting vocals and lyrical themes born of the current world/moment — the title-track lays out the stance: “Fuck you and fuck your beliefs/You’ll find yourself with nothing left to eat/Your towers will crumble and fall/The meek will take the power back” — crash and plunder, and yes, you would say it’s duly heavy for arriving some 11 years after the two-piece reportedly decided to be a band.
The empowerment aspect of hardcore comes into play, in that closing title-track and in earlier pieces as Arsis Thesis portray their dynamic in following where the riffs lead. Opener “Heretical Violence” establishes its riff and rolls it right over you with punkish glee, and yes, there’s open space in the mix where bass would otherwise be, but it becomes part of the persona and even part of the urgency conveyed in the material. Like they had so much to say they didn’t have time to find somebody to handle low end — not that the guitar wants for it. But where some acts use a duo configuration to carry over a garage-style sound or something like that, from the outset here, you might call Arsis Thesis crushing were it not for all the antifascist validation taking place in the material. That is to say, they’re heavy as crap but it’s hard to call something a crusher when it’s so uplifting.
“Capricorn,” which follows “Heretical Violence” at the
start of the record, feels like it’s ready to work with J. Robbins, meeting at the intersection between rock, punk and hardcore — so yes, noise rock; they compare themselves to Whores. and others, so this isn’t really an insight — and precedes “Derision” and “Firebird,” both of which top nine minutes and back-to-back are the two longest pieces on Ustanak. The arrival of derision is arguably a make-or-break moment for the album, and the question going in is whether the Blevinses can maintain a progression over that stretch, taking the intensity they’ve already put forth as an essential tenet of what they do and stretching it over that kind of runtime. Generally speaking, there’s a reason hardcore songs are like a minute long. This is where their having been a band for 11 years comes into play, I suspect, since “Derision” and “Firebird” are less drawing out the same impulses from “Capricorn” than they are revealing the real journey that Ustanak is providing to the listener and the fuller breadth of Arsis Thesis‘ stylistic reach. They end up as the most satisfying portion of the record — not the least for the confidence with which they elbow past expectation — each with its own procession and the latter landing that much harder for its lyrical hook.
An ambient turn in the penultimate “The Sunrise We’ll Never See” and a sample that’s about wealth inequality make up the first half of the song while an undulating nodder of a riff comprises the second, and part of what Arsis Thesis are doing there is giving the listener room to process after “Firebird” and “Derision,” adding to the overarching atmosphere of the album, and letting “Ustanak” have its own space and lead-in as the finale. The closer is kin in intent to the two longer tracks (it’s just shy of nine minutes) and begins with acoustic guitar before the hard thud of the emergent doom roll takes hold at 1:18, and from there it is an even more visceral linear build as they make their way to the shoutier, bruisier apex, reminding of 16 by the time they get there but not dwelling in the crescendo so much as using at a letting-go point to end the album with a cold finish of cut-off feedback.
Because this the United States in 2026, listening to socially conscious heavy hardcore probably gets your name put on a watchlist, so heads up on that. But you were probably on that list anyway, and it’s a small price to pay to be reminded that fascism is neither normal nor acceptible and to hear Arsis Thesis‘ ambitions pan out in a stylistic meld that stays grounded while exploring a progressive songwriting modus. I won’t predict when it might get a follow-up, what shape that might take, or how much worse ‘things’ will get before their sophomore LP surfaces, but Ustanak claims a sound of its own, and that too puts them on the right side of history.
PR wire info follows. Please enjoy:
Arsis Thesis is a doom metal duo of brothers hailing from Houston Texas. Nick Blevins (Guitar/Vocals) and Jake Blevins (Drums/Vocals) formed the band back in 2015 off the backs of many other progressive rock ventures, vowing to create an untamable aural cataclysm while sticking to their genre-fluid tendencies from past projects. While Arsis Thesis create a familiar doom metal resonance, their lack of loyalty to the conventions of the genre is a defining feature of the sonic assaults they construct. Their first EP “Pangea” was lauded for diving into unique spaces traditional doom often does not tread, incorporating noise rock, math rock, sludge, post-hardcore, psych, and other experimental tendencies across the five track debut.
Arsis Thesis have resurfaced now with a full-length album “Ustanak”. While this release retains all the virtues of sonic exploration as their first release, it creates new focus when it comes to subject matter. Ustanak is the Serbian word for rebellion, and the title is not just a characteristic of the tracks held within.
It’s an album about unending, unfaltering rage and all the baggage that comes with it. A white hot rage for systemic oppression that befalls a world that doesn’t care for its inhabitants. It’s a six track mission statement on channeling anger into a productive, disciplined end point that undulates, careens and course-corrects itself through a plethora of sonic landscapes, just as the uprising its namesake eludes to surely would as well.
Tracklist:
1. Heretical Violence (3:01)
2. Capricorn (5:30)
3. Derision (9:42)
4. Firebird (9:14)
5. The Sunrise We’ll Never See (3:50)
6. Ustanak (8:56)
Artwork by Adam Burke (Nightjar Illustration)
Arsis Thesis is:
Nick Blevins (Vocals, guitar)
Jake Blevins (Vocals, drums)
