REVIEW: They Are Cutting My Arms Off - Apparition [2026]

Artist: They Are Cutting My Arms Off
Album: Apparition

One of my best friends doesn’t really like heavy music very much. He’s five or six years older than I am, and he’s only recently explored superficial levels of metalcore (much at my behest) and come away only really enjoying some of the more radio-friendly (see: Octane) acts—which is fine (I guess). Despite this, he’s a talented musician, so not-infrequently, I’ll send him bands that I know he won’t enjoy, but might still appreciate. I’m leading with this because it was in this way that I introduced my friend to the terms sass and whitebelt. “I’m pretty sure you’re making those terms up,” he told me—and try as I might to source a recent band that really captures the zeitgeist of the mid-2000s frantic fervor and spastic aggression of sass and whitebelt acts, I struggled.

Enter: They Are Cutting My Arms Off.

A type of band that can only—or maybe best—be described as pure Wax Vessel-sourced insanity, capturing the gist of a style without devolving to pure nostalgia bait, the band’s debut record, Apparition is sheer chaos. Existing at a seldom-explored intersection of whitebelt, mathcore and cybergrind, They Are Cutting My Arms Off might not be the first band to draw heavily upon the stylings of The Blood Brothers et al., but they’re certainly among the first to do it in such a wanton and cavalier way. Throughout Apparition, nothing feels off limits—whether its samples, shred, spine-rending breakdowns or scintillating groove, They Are Cutting My Arms Off are captivating in a way that defies nostalgia while still allowing those lucky initiated few the opportunity to reminisce.

It would be easy and not entirely inaccurate to define They Are Cutting My Arms Off using a medley of their homophones—“Blood Brothers, but Arsonists Get All the Girls-er” or, “HeavyHeavyLowLow but maybe with ZOMBIESHARK!” are all fair comparisons, but all also somehow manage to fall a little short of the mark. Somewhere between the dissonant and hard-to-trace grooves a la mathcore-tinted-whitebelt antics and the synth’d out, off-the-wall and topsy-turvy nature found in splashes of the overt but tasteful grindcore and cybergrind influence, you’ll find They Are Cutting My Arms Off’s Apparition. With nary a song over two minutes and plenty of chaos to be had, the group waste little time in turning the listener on their head with “Goodnight, Finally”—a stand-out track that takes the listener through the band’s paces. Sweltering breakdowns lurch into screeching guitar wails and frantic percussion—with the odd but timeless quintessential meme injection to tie it all together. This exists in somewhat stark contrast to “Future Finder,” a song that trades a collection of heavy-handed breakdowns tied together by sass for something more thoroughbred in its sass influence (sassfluence?). Here a break-neck salvo of kick drum and snare are the underpinning, as blast beats of varying candors and speeds are tied together by strung-out fretwork and a constant, screeching barrage of ear-splitting screams.

Between these two relative extremes, songs like “Disaster’s Grace” positively shine—as They Are Cutting My Arms Off don’t slack where outright heaviness is concerned, but still manage to spend much of the song in a dancy, catchy combination of tresilo/dembow percussion and riffs that sound akin to someone trying to play a guitar like a violin (I’m sure there’s a better name, but if you’ve heard anything on …Burn, Piano Island, Burn you know what I mean) quintessential to whitebelt stylings of the mid 2000s. Apparition, in this way, is as much a history lesson and homage to that era as it is a fun spin on it, with elements carefully selected from (insert your favorite mathcore record here), but buffed and spit-shined into relevance once more in the onerous 2026.

Between the taciturn unease of “[Void],” the dense aggression in “Goodnight, Finally” and “Less” or the metric ton of sing-a-long sass on “Portrait of a Ghost in Watercolor” or “Disaster’s Grace,” They Are Cutting My Arms Off highlight vocal expertise, instrumental mastery and prodigal songwriting honed to a fine point by outstanding production throughout Apparition. Worth infinitely more than an easy comparison to their peers or influences, They Are Cutting My Arms Off exist as a righteous testament to the durability of one of my favorite sonic absurdities from my youth—even if its name is maybe just a little embarrassing to explain to those uninitiated.

9/10
For Fans Of: SeeYouSpaceCowboy, Arsonists Get All the Girls, Blood Brothers, Duck Duck Goose, fashion of the mid 2000s.
By: Connor Welsh