Album Review: Your Spirit Dies – My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest (MNRK Heavy)

Unstoppable US hardcore metal crossover heavyweights Your Spirit Dies will releases their long-awaited debut album, ‘My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest’ on May 2nd, 2025, via MNRK Heavy.

Rage and ion personified, Your Spirit Dies have poured so much into this debut album and that intensity pays off, not just because it is a spitting and snarling beast of a record, but because it’s multi-layered and varied. Metallised hardcore that has strong crossover appeal, a certain level of accessibility (at least within heavy quarters), and an undeniable focus. Which results in an exemplary showcase of talent, filled with familiarity and freshness, while being delightfully vicious.

It’s a stonkingly good debut record, and it won’t take long for new listeners to be convinced too. Not when Your Spirit Dies comes screaming out of the starting gates with the anarchic sound of Trenches of Pain. It’s a punishing start, not even two minutes long, but as will become clear, its punishment that you can’t help but beg for. Especially when guests like Zao’s Dan Weyandt get involved on thrashy and groovy tracks like Serpentine. One of a few guests that feature on the album.

Before I get to the rest, it’s more brutal heaviness with the wild instrumentals and roaring vocals of A Rose for Every Stone. Hold on though, here we have a chorus that gives this one a more ‘metalcore’ flavour. Then there is In the Depths of Grief, a short flash of crashing ferocity with sharp guitars. Before the halfway point of the album is reached with another slice of groove-infused power with Monochrome and Born Forsaken.

I don’t want to sound like a broken record, but it bears repeating that this album is freaking heavy!

A bit of intriguing guitar melody freshens up the palette, but be warned, Shrouded in Silence is mean, regardless. Although even that pales in comparison to the follow Ritual Sacrament, which is carnage from the first second to the last, even when it switches tempo and becomes more ‘two-step’ like. The pure noisiness of this one makes it a personal favourite. Whereas A Snow in Summer has No Cure’s Blaythe Steuer helping make it one of the album’s heaviest, absurdly so.

If there is one track that doesn’t quite slam, it’s Unjust God, and that’s because of its melodic intro and outro, which don’t quite fit. Although some atmosphere is created and the chorus soars, featuring the cleanest vocals yet, which does make it stand out.

Who doesn’t love The Callous Daoboys? Good news! Vocalist Carson Pace is the third, and final, guest on the album. Lending their immense talents to a blast of feral and furious fun called Night Pierces My Bones, depending on your proclivity for this kind of fun. The latter part of the album is certainly a bit more varied, and the exclamation point comes with the gargantuan finale of An Effigy of Failure. The intensity is still there, and even though it’s been one hell of an exhausting listen, it’s so easy to meet Your Spirit Dies’ level purely because they’ve thrown so much of themselves into making this debut everything it could be.

Mission accomplished. It’s a banger.

Your Spirit Dies – My Gnawing Pains Will Never Rest Track Listing:

1. Trenches of Pain
2. Serpentine (feat. Dan Weyandt of Zao)
3. A Rose for Every Stone
4. In the Depths of Grief
5. Monochrome
6. Born Forsaken
7. Shrouded in Silence
8. Ritual Sacrament
9. A Snow in Summer (feat. Blaythe Steuer of No Cure)
10. Unjust God
11. Night Pierces My Bones (feat. Carson Pace of The Callous Daoboys)
12. An Effigy of Failure

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