meth.

Emerging from Chicago, the six-piece Meth. constructs metallic music that merges the unbound experimentation of noise with mathcore's rigorous structures. Their concerts interweave open-ended improvisation and tightly executed versions of the group's written pieces, an intensity the band captured on the 2019 debut album Mother of Red Light. Seb Alvarez, formerly the vocalist and songwriter in hardcore outfit Cadence Fox, launched Meth. in Chicago during 2016. Conceived at first as Alvarez's solo effort, the project grew once the members of Black Nail joined as his supporting musicians, forming a complete collective. Demo sessions led to the 2017 release of the debut EP The Children Are Watching and, the following year, the conceptual EP I Love You. Until then Meth. operated chiefly as a recording act whose work remained a controlled yet disordered strain of metalcore. Around 2018 the focus shifted to live appearances, where the group frequently steered performances into experimental territory. That development surfaced in the noise-infused layers of the ferocious 2019 full-length Mother of Red Light, which the band backed with extensive touring.