"Their elaborate and very loud efforts to build tension, achieve overwhelming catharsis, and write their most memorable melodies yet feels more like a conversation with a medium they love. It doesn’t hurt that their newfound transparency makes the music feel refreshingly human and relatable" - Pitchfork reviews the new album by the elusive hipster-hardcore band The Armed (tagged it Best New Music, grade 8.2). 'Ultrapop' is also Stereogum's Album of the Week, described as "punishing, bombastic, catchy, genuinely surprising collection of songs... It sounds like everything hitting at once. It rules so hard". Treblezine appreciates the album's "juxtaposition of delicate dream pop and metal".

It wasn't really clear who exactly are the members of Detroit hardcore collective The Armed, who their apparent leader Dan Greene really is, and what the role of Converge guitarist Kurt Ballou entails. With their new album 'Ultrapop' they're losing the anonymity, and for the first time they've released a video showing eight musicians, who the band claims is them. The Quietus talked to their (probable) member Adam Vallely trying to clear things up. He says that band consists of "in terms of audio contributions, 25 to 30 people at any one time. Then that often boils down to the songs that we play being about six to nine people". On their new album they move away from their previous hard-core sound, adding pop and hip-hop elements - "we’re trying to truly be experimental and try to craft some sort of new experience for people... I’d rather be the band that doesn’t get all the way there but pushes the next person to be super great with something you were able to put forward". In general, Vallely says, "we’re setting these hilariously larger than life goals for ourselves, to create a new genre of Ultrapop, and eventually create something that is more Ultrapop than hardcore".

Fucked Up release an epic 19-minute punk beast 'Year Of The Horse – Act One'; Night Beats are part psychedelia part garage in 'New Day', a fun strange song; The Armed release a familiar-sounding yet new 'All Futures'; it took Neil Young decades to share his folk-waltz 'Daughters', well it's here now.