Simulakra emerged out of the Delaware hardcore scene (with members who also play in Foreign Hands, Vicious Embrace, Gridiron, and more) in 2019 with a demo and an EP, and now they've just released their first full-length album, The Infection Spreads, via DAZE. It was produced by and mixed by Wyatt Oberholzer of Chemical Fix, Drowse, and Fixation, and the vocals were tracked by Brandon Watkins of Year of the Knife, whose Tyler Mullen also lends his voice to the punishing closing track "Follow the Flies." The LP offers up 10 songs that clock in at 21 minutes, and it finds the band bringing a totally fresh approach to dark, heavy, '90s-style metallic hardcore. It's the perfect vessel for the bleak subject matter of the album, which vocalist Dom Pabon describes like this:
The record has an overall theme of sickness and plague. It essentially tells the story of a government telling the mass population that they have things under control when that’s not the case, and it’s only getting worse and worse. These ideas tie into everything surrounding the record, from the art to the emergency broadcast trailer, to the clips of hospitals, biological weapons, and general corruption in the music video. We all love horror and science-fiction movies and wanted to have the record reflect those same kinds of concepts both musically and lyrically.