The first moments on the latest Knocked Loose EP feel something like the opening credit sequence of Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining. Recalling the film’s unsettling helicopter shot trailing Jack Torrance’s VW Beetle across the treacherous twists of a Rocky Mountain pass, vocalist and songwriter Bryan Garris takes a similar aerial view of an ill-fated vehicle skidding through a southern sun-stained valley, “floating around the bend / where light divides the holler.” And like the doomed Boulder family at the heart of Kubrick’s 1980 masterpiece, the song soon explodes in an unforgettable fit of violence and grief.
Such cinematic flair, married with a knack for reaching beyond typical genre tropes, lights up the rest of the brief but bruising 21-minute runtime of A Tear in the Fabric of Life. Signaling a high water mark for the exceedingly heavy Kentucky quintet, these six ferocious studio cuts find the restless breakout act experimenting with dramatic flourishes and an expanded musical vocabulary that feels light years ahead of the band’s more straight-ahead 2016 debut Laugh Tracks.
“With every release, you try to challenge yourself and grow. We expanded where we draw influence from in order to challenge ourselves as musicians,” Garris says. “We also tour pretty heavily, and I think a lot of our influence comes from trial and error when it comes to live shows.”
That willingness to tinker with the possibilities of a style not always known for nuance has earned praise for Knocked Loose in unexpected outlets like NPR, suggesting the band’s appeal transcends the insular world of metalcore — a scene-driven blend of metal and hardcore punk that broke through in the early 2000s. The band was instrumental in reviving the sub-genre for contemporary audiences, including a cultish devotion to its signature slow and groove-forward breakdowns, but it’s their propensity for playing with the formula that continues to set them apart.
“I really enjoy taking influence from outside of heavy music, and I think that’s really important. On [A Tear in the Fabric of Life] I drew a lot of influence from country music,” Garris says. “There are Easter eggs throughout the EP related to that genre just because I wanted to create the environment in which the story takes place — I wanted it to feel like Kentucky.”
Such references include a nod to the Brenda Lee classic “Sweet Nothings,” a karaoke standard for Garris’ country music-loving grandmother whose lyrics get repurposed on the punishing track “Contorted in the Fraile.” But it’s not just sly cultural nudges that tie Knocked Loose to the Bluegrass State. The band’s roots in the Louisville DIY scene have grown the quintet into the genre-scrambling metalcore mainstay listeners know today.
“Our scene is very diverse because it’s too small to divide. You don’t want to have just a punk show or just a hardcore show or just a metal show. There’s not enough people,” Garris says. “So you have a show that has punk and metal and hardcore, so you can get the biggest turnout possible. I think that really influenced how we handle touring to this day. We’ll do a pop-punk tour. We’ll do a rap tour. We’ll do a metal tour.”
In addition to an omnivorous appetite for touring, cutting their teeth in Kentucky also gave the band a sense of urgency to establish themselves with audiences across the country. “Nobody’s gonna come there to see us, so we gotta take it everywhere,” Garris says of those early days. “So as soon as we could afford it, we bought a $1,500 van from a church and have been on tour ever since.”
The near-nonstop touring and restless ambition to connect with new listeners brings Knocked Loose to Red Rocks on Oct. 31, where the band will support New Orleans horrorcore hip-hop duo $UICIDEBOY$ and a slate of other rappers and DJs. It’s not the first place you might expect to encounter the band’s measured brand of metalcore, but Garris sees their placement on such bills as an opportunity to push themselves as a live act.
“In the position we’re in now, we’re able to play all these stages in front of all these new crowds,” he says. “Learning how to communicate in these different spaces and how to interact with the audience and get them involved is a challenge I really enjoy.”
The sloping red rock formations and cavernous quality of the treasured Front Range venue may be a far cry from the crowded basement and club shows where metal and hardcore bands typically thrive. But don’t expect the hugeness of the open-air amphitheater or the gig’s lack of heavy music fellow travelers to dull the ferocity of a traditional Knocked Loose show.
“In some ways, I feel like there are aspects that can be more intense sometimes in my opinion,” he says. “If you can get that amount of people to respond to what you’re doing, it’s overwhelming in a really positive way.”
ON THE BILL: $UICIDEBOY$ w/ Ski Mask The Slump God, Knocked Loose and DJ Scheme. 7:30 p.m. Oct. 31-Nov. 1, Red Rocks Amphitheatre, 18300 W. Alameda Parkway, Morrison. Tickets here.
