REVIEW: PSYCHO-FRAME: SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER [2025]

Artist: PSYCHO-FRAME
Album: SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER

I’d like to start this article with some context. I’ve been writing reviews since I was a Freshman in high school (which was an embarrassingly long time ago)—some for the school newspaper, some for digital sinkholes like SputnikMusic, some for print newspapers and most for two digital outlets, with a great majority of them being for the site you’re currently reading this on. I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve heard a full length so good that writing a review that does the music justice feels akin to an insurmountable task—a personal Everest, a hurdle too tall to even consider jumping. This isn’t to say I just said “wow, that was a good record” and moved on, it’s more to say that sometimes there are just some albums where the experience of listening to it—taking it in both in the current time and climate its released and days, weeks, months or years later—trumps any words someone could write or record about it. I’ve taken to jokingly call these records “impossibly perfect,” in the sense that it’s practically impossible to describe them, their influence and their sonic effect—at least in totality.

Of all of those incredible releases, PSYCHO-FRAME’s debut full length, SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER might be the most impossibly perfect record of them all.

Continuing what is already a general run of outstanding EPs with Remote God Seeker and Automatic Death Protocol alongside two-track single FEED, it would be an understatement to say PSYCHO-FRAME are simply having a moment. More accurately, they are defining a moment, using everything from overt hardcore, death metal and brutal slamming death metal to rejuvenate deathcore into a logical continuation from the genre’s earliest and most extreme acts. Riffs that rend flesh from bone wage an unholy war against skin-shredding blast beats, prolapse-inducing bass and vocals with ferocity and intensity that are matched only by the obscene fervor of their lyrical content. With SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER, PSYCHO-FRAME transcend their humble origins as the tongue-in-cheek, heel-bit deathcore act in the same breath that they transcend their status as a touchstone for the genre, becoming a generational archetype; a glimmering (though impossibly lofty) height the likes of which other bands within heavy music can only hope to reach.

I’m not even exaggerating that over the generous timeframe I’ve had to listen to PSYCHO-FRAME’s long-awaited debut LP, every time I’ve sat down to try an article I’ve been met only with a blank page and mounting frustration. At first it was maybe a concept article, mirroring the violent, aggressive and watch-out-for-number-one-first mentality abundant throughout the lyrical aspects of SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER. That seemed too pretentious. Then, maybe, it was a track-by-track walkthrough—which was quickly abandoned as what I generally consider to be the lowest form of reviewing. Ultimately, I settled on this—a simple and honest approach: there is not a record I can think of that manages to so excellently and effortlessly blend technicality, heaviness, intensity and fun into one record while making it all feel natural. Songs like the album’s introduction, “BLUEPRINTS FOR IDOL GENOCIDE,” start with a tongue-in-cheek sample before bearing its fangs and drawing blood. Here, break-neck blast beats from Leo McClain reign supreme, oscillating hither and to into crunchy, dissonant breakdowns and jarring, harshly metallic riffs. If we’re being honest, that’s how PSYCHO-FRAME spend much of their time—riffs from songwriter Hunter Young alongside Dave Mustrange going absolutely ham (for lack of a better term) atop some of the finest percussion the genre—and heavy music in general—has to offer from McClain. Using a full-bodied eleven-track record to explore some new sonic stomping ground, Salvation Laughs in the Face of a Grieving Mother also features cuts like “I WON’T BE THERE TO WATCH YOU GO,” a song whose title is almost as long as the track itself. Here, The Frame lean much more heavily into hardcore with a splash of brutal death metal, with much of the song living in an over-driven two-step, with everything culminating in an explosively bouncy, incredibly ear-catching salvo of chugs.

Other songs amplify the band’s technical nature. “STILLWATER SALVATION,” alongside the record’s debut single “THE PORTAL” are clear examples, with Young and Mustang’s fingers clocking overtime on the fretboard. “APOCALYPSE THROUGH LYSERGIC POSSESSION” is another example that wastes not even a millisecond in its no-holds-barred technical onslaught, where frantically tapped notes pepper the listener’s carapace like slugs from a Glock with a switch—before switching things up dramatically and toggling to a breakdown that feels like God himself is cracking your spine with a sledgehammer. “APOCALYPSE THROUGH LYSERGIC POSSESSION,” in this way, highlights much of Young’s brilliance in songwriting, refusing to compromise the energy and candor of a track for a good breakdown, but rather, making them sensibly follow the chaotic and unpredictable milieu that PSYCHO-FRAME seem to so comfortably inhabit.

To speak of chaos, however, is to speak of the ruthless vocal dynamic that exists between frontmen Mike Sugars (Vatican, Church Tongue) and Colter Adams (World of Pleasure, Serration, Killing of a Sacred Deer)—with a little help from Young here and there. Whether its the ear-splitting brees abundant on “FILLETED AND FUCKED [S.O.L.]” and “APOCALYPSE THROUGH LYSERGIC POSSESSION,” the uproariously raunchy lyrics of “BLUEPRINTS FOR IDOL GENOCIDE” or the pure bitterness that permeates the performance, lyricism and candor of closing track “NEURO++TERROR,” everything about the band’s vocal element is utterly incendiary. Doubling down on the tongue-in-cheek cynicisms and dark, blistering malevolence, SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER can really be best described as purely misanthropic, stopping at nothing to berate the listener with each harshly spat, screamed or shouted syllable that hits their ears. Is this new to the PSYCHO-FRAME playbook? Absolutely not—but the cohesiveness, intensity and pure vitriol sees the band’s purest form distilled and turned up to 11. “GOD IS BUSY” might just be one of the best examples of no-holds-barred, everything-about-you-is-a-farce lyricism on the LP, but a personal favorite resides in the closing lyrics of “NEURO++TERROR,” where the duo harshly remind the listener “not a fucking soul will be attending your funeral” (alongside some gorier bits). If you’re reading this and find yourself thinking its corny, sure, you’re entitled to your opinion I suppose, but that reflects more on you simply not getting it. The outstanding vocal delivery and unwavering compromise on uncomfortable and unabashedly aggressive lyrical content is PSYCHO-FRAME taking what made deathcore a provocative and exciting musical style and continuing the thread, upping the ante and delivering on it without remorse or need for acceptance.

I could keep going—but if the review hasn’t started to veer into stream-of-consciousness rambling yet, it almost certainly would. To summarize and bring it all home, my takeaway for the listener is that PSYCHO-FRAME’s SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER is, as heavy music goes, a perfect record; a generational release that will serve as the unreachable-but-inspirational archetype for any band in this vein of extreme music for years to come. It accomplishes this through technical tenacity, immaculate songwriting, piercing and dynamic production, unstoppable aggression, indomitable vocal fortitude and the total lack of compromise; PSYCHO-FRAME have managed to make the world of heavy music bend a knee to their collective whim, and never the other way around. While many of the things that make SALVATION a great release are just as prevalent on PSYCHO-FRAME’s early works, the band’s debut LP gives them time to more fully explore all the influences and styles that comprise their dynamic. This release is their sound’s final form—its Ultra Ego, its Devil Gundam—you get the picture. As someone who has what some people might consider an unusual passion for deathcore and music-with-breakdowns in general, SALVATION LAUGHS IN THE FACE OF A GRIEVING MOTHER feels like discovering heavy music for the first time every time I listen to it—and for that, I think it might be among the most complete and perfect records I’ve ever heard.

10/10
For Fans Of: Killing of a Sacred Deer, Ion Dissonance, Beneath the Massacre, Waking the Cadaver, Dying Fetus, SUNAMI
By: Connor Welsh