A Wilhelm Scream – Cheap Heat
Release Date: 27th February 2026
Label: Creator-Destructor Records
Bandcamp
Genre: Melodic Hardcore, Hardcore Punk.
FFO: Propagandhi, Comeback Kid, Bad Religion, Death By Stereo.
Review By: Paul Franklin
They’ve missed a trick.
New Bedford, Massachusetts’ trailblazers A Wilhelm Scream have missed a trick with their sixth full-length studio LP.
They should have released this album just over a month ago. Specifically on the 19th of January, more popularly known as Blue Monday, ‘the saddest day of the year’.
Because Cheap Heat would have obliterated it.
It’s a sonic defibrillator. Thirty minutes of unrelenting velocity, precise nonstop riffs and soaring hooks. A melodic hardcore adrenaline rush that shocks you out of your wallowing stupor.
The opening to Somebody’s Gonna Die sounds like swarm of furious wasps caught in a feedback loop, whilst The Scumbag Grift knocks you to the floor of a raging circle pit before a powerful arm of melody wraps itself around your torso and hauls you upright.
Standout single I Got Tunnel Vision is an aural assault so focussed that it would beat a stuffed owl in a staring contest. No nuance, no subtlety, no wide angle, just a rocket-fuelled, punk-infused sprint to the finish.
Thematically, Cheap Heat sees the band embrace their dark side and come out with, as Guitarist/vocalist Trevor Reilly says “some savage stories told from our signature perspective of the sore winner that refuses to lose. There are no good guys here.”
In wrestling parlance ‘Cheap Heat’ refers to a villain or “heel” getting a quick, easy negative reaction from the crowd, and the two and a half minute, middle finger in the air blast of Let It Ride is “a tale about embracing your inner villain and just saying fuck it. Hop in the whip and blast this shit.”
If Munch’s scream could speak, it would sound exactly like this: relentless, jagged, alive. And with more energy than a Duracell bunny hardwired to the mains, A Wilhelm Scream ain’t stopping anytime soon.
(4 / 5)
