Death Lens

Death Lens want to be in your ear at all times. They hide their ferocity underneath a thick veneer of style until the energy and chaos of one of their live shows leaves every audience member disarmed and forever changed. Off the strength of 2022’s No Luck, tours with Bad Religion, Militarie Gun, Four Year Strong, and the support of their hometown, Death Lens signed to Epitaph Records and released their new album, Cold World, on May 3.

For Death Lens, it’s all been building to this. Cold World is a departure from the early styles Death Lens mimicked as a young band, transmuting them into matured and brawny post-hardcore tinged rock songs.

On record, Death Lens have an established habit of writing hard-nosed rock that combines West Coast reverbed-out surf punk with tight and bouncy Britrock, deceptively characterizing the band as exclusively chill and vibe-focused when live, a Death Lens show has all the energy of hardcore. Slick guitar sonics and sugary backing vocal harmonies that feel like the best parts of indie punk and shoegaze are the foundation of their style, but in a 200 capacity room, Death Lens brings the same winning concoction as Turnstile and Militarie Gun. In other words, these are the kinds of songs that become the soundtrack to enduring memories of nights of drunken, sweat-drenched singalongs.