Premiere: Ostraca Expose The Storm Of Life On New Album, Eventualities

Real expression demands the weight of what it represents. Intense emotion requires overwhelming release. Devastating hardships deserve agonizing sacrifice. Tormenting truths warrant raw reckoning. While all music genres can tap into this fervor, few reckon with the stakes as completely as screamo does. Beneath its chaos, dissonance, and calamity lies a form shaped by the most harrowing realities: personal ruin, societal decay, fractured existence, moral erosion, and the total collapse of hope. Verse-chorus safety nets crack under this pressure. Melodies and rhythms polished for comfort can’t begin to shoulder the turmoil.

This is where screamo flourishes, in the shapeless fury that twists itself into whatever form the moment demands. Richmond’s Ostraca embody this volatile brilliance with fearless abandon, each note emerging from the wreckage, clawing its way through the carnage, and howling back with unrelenting purpose. On the band’s newest record, Eventualities, the strident trio continues this fierce tradition of unapologetic release, one that has made their discography a jarring and compelling force over the years, securing their place as one of the central figures in the region renowned for screamo’s rise to anguished prominence. Set for release on Friday, April 18 via Persistent Vision Records, this new record displays their cagey presentation, ever-shifting with each release, yet consistently radiant in its dark pull across its four towering tracks. Today, The Auricular is proud to premiere this record with an exclusive stream below, followed by deeper insight into its stark resonance.

 

Eventualities follows Disaster, Ostraca’s 2023 release that broke their recording hiatus since Enemy in 2018. Both albums received widespread praise, earning year-end recognition in national heavy music circles, while also garnering local acclaim–Disaster notably securing a Newlin Music Prize nomination. While carving out its own space in Ostraca’s tense world, Eventualities feels like an effort to cover the brutal expanse of the band’s catalog. On a surface level, this is evident in the inclusion of “So Do I,” a track originally released on Yarrow, a 2017 split release with Untold Want, Vril, and Coma Regalia. Re-recorded to align with the new album’s tone, it serves as a tether between the Ostraca that emerged in the wake of Kilgore Trout and the Ostraca that exists now as true underground titans. Even without that context, the fractured essence of the band’s previous heavyweights still lingers in the mix: the crushing weight of Disaster, the antagonistic force of Enemy, the destructive doom of 2017’s Last, and the introspective atrophy of 2015’s Deathless

“Song For A Closed Door,” the album’s lead single, starts off with a dire guitar line, echoing into the void that the band usually looks to fill with guttural rage. It’s the first time the band has opened without some semblance of noise since Deathless, or, if you look deeper into the band’s catalog, their split record with Flesh Born, 2017’s Faces Of The Moving Year. At a time when everyone in this world seems to seethe with indignation, rightfully or ignorantly, it’s a remarkable artistic statement to begin with pause on a hardcore record, meditation almost that ultimately makes the ensuing clamor feel justified and equitable. That pensive space returns throughout the song’s runtime, offering a chance to recalibrate and tighten their emotional grip before plunging back into the sharp dissonance. Tension doesn’t always need to erupt in order to be felt, but when that burst does come, it will be sharper, more intentional, and all the more desolating for the silence that came before.

“Compromise” follows next with a familiar hardcore blitz, pummeling in rhythm and stabbing in its riffage before the guitar passes the serrated blade to the vocals. As the musical discord gives way to stretches of atmospheric dread, the song begins to simmer with bitter apathy, steeped in the disillusionment of endless concessions. Its anger builds around the insult of accommodation–how the supposed middle ground has become a moving target, manipulated through shifting goalposts and cloaked condemnations. The track’s back-and-forth between sonic assault and brooding quiet lays bare what compromise should mean: mutual effort, incremental gains, and hard-won trust. But as the vocals spiral into raw desperation and the band erupts again, the bleak truth emerges. That ideal has been hijacked and hollowed out, twisted into a weapon for the powerful to maintain control. What remains is no agreement, no justice… just a sanctimonious shell of victory, shattered and scorched.

“Esau” retreats into restraint, its title referencing a Judaic narrative rooted in birthrights and vengeance–an allusion to the ongoing genocide in Palestine, carried out by an oppressive state and enabled by a complicit global community. Here, the themes of Ostraca’s previous records converge, fully realizing the demand for true expression that screamo is so uniquely equipped to manage. Post-rock astonishment collides with hardcore alarm, offering a song universal in its impact yet grounded in real terror that far too many still choose to look away from. The horrors of this world call for the entire spectrum of emotion, not just in response to the atrocities themselves, but to the aftermath they leave behind, and the deplorable actions–and silences–that continue to sustain them. Ostraca confronts this head-on with unwavering conviction, channeling the full weight of the moment into a track that distills the raw, unrelenting essence of screamo at its most impactful.

“So Do I” closes the record, a gripping song that tackles a sense of radical sensitivity that’s vital to endure the brutality of the world. Recorded nearly a decade ago, its placement here as the final statement is a stroke of brilliance, aligning with the bleak gravity of “Esau” and mirroring the stark urgency of both “Compromise” and “Song For A Closed Door.” Each track is esoteric in its noisy delivery, yet unmistakably clear in its modern protest against a system so gleefully warped that calling it broken feels far too generous. “So Do I” illustrates how the collapse of the world can distort our perception so profoundly that simply existing begins to feel like a grim inevitability, like roadkill destined to be run over.

The fact that “So Do I” cuts just as deep in 2025 as it did in 2017 speaks volumes about the state of the world around us. Much like Eventualities, we try to tether moments of reflection or solace in between periods of chaos and upheaval. Yet the narrative rejects this illusion, exposing it as either a calm before the storm or the aftermath of destruction. But this is a falsehood. There is no calm before the storm. Life is the storm. Even in its quieter moments, it swells and surges uncontrollably. Ostraca manifest this on Eventualities, capturing the sense of helplessness that arises even in the illusion of agency. In doing so, it allows us to grasp the true weight of the moment, with expression that’s meticulously crafted to bear the burden wherever it must lead.

Eventualities is set for release on Friday, April 18 through Persistent Vision Records, available digitally as well as on vinyl and cassette, which you can order through the label’s website or this Bandcamp page. Make sure to follow Ostraca on social media to stay up-to-date on future releases and news.