If you've spent any time in the Chicago heavy scene, you know VCTMS doesn't ask for your attention; they take it. Born and bred in Chicago, the band carries the weight of the city's notoriously unforgiving heavy music tradition in everything they do, the urgency, the grit, the refusal to make anything easy on the listener. Pain Processing II is the follow-up to the band's most recent EP and arrives as a concise, punishing statement from a group that has spent years honing something genuinely hard to name. It's metalcore at its black core, but it bleeds into darkwave, industrial, hip-hop, and post-hardcore at will, and the seams never show. This is a band that has been building toward something for a long time, and with each release, the architecture becomes clearer, not because they're simplifying, but because they've gotten better at knowing exactly what they want to destroy and how.
Context matters here. VCTMS is the work of three people: drummer, lyricist, and de facto engine Meredith Henderson, vocalist John Matalone, and guitarist Ryan Walter. That's it. Three people responsible for one of the most relentlessly productive discographies in contemporary heavy music, five full-length records spanning Sickness, Vol. 1 through Vol. II: Inside the Mind, Vol. III: Halfway Happy, Vol. IV: Numb the Ache, and Vol. V: The Hurt Collection, plus multiple EPs, cross-country tours, and a string of collaborations that reads like a who's who of the modern heavy scene. Henderson in particular operates at a level that defies easy categorization. Managing the band while writing the lyrics and holding down the rhythm section is not a small thing, and the fingerprints of that total investment are audible on every record.
They didn't arrive at this sound overnight. The band has spent years on the road, refining a sound that screams Chicago without apology. That kind of road-worn confidence doesn't come from the studio. It comes from knowing your material well enough to trust it completely, night after night, city after city. Chicago has always produced heavy music with a particular chip on its shoulder, something rawer and more manic than what comes out of the coasts, and VCTMS are the clearest current expression of that lineage. By the time Pain Processing II lands, they sound like a band that has already proven everything they needed to prove and is now just making music because they can't stop.
The EP opens with "twenty/eight," a nearly four-minute gut-punch that establishes the mood immediately, groove-heavy and chaotic, emotionally raw in that specific way VCTMS have made their signature. Walter's guitar work sits low and mean in the mix, Henderson drives the rhythm with the kind of precision that makes chaos feel controlled, and Matalone's vocals ride the line between confession and detonation. The production sits somewhere between claustrophobic and cavernous, which is exactly where it should be. There's a pressure to it, like the walls of the mix are leaning inward. From there, "victim/mentality" brings in Austin Hays of Heavy//Hitter, and the collaborative chemistry feels earned rather than grafted on. VCTMS have always known how to pick guests, a skill sharpened by years of working alongside names like Spite's Darius Tehrani, Emmure's Frankie Palmeri, and Paleface Swiss' Marc Zelli, and Pain Processing II is no different. Every feature serves the song rather than the other way around, which is rarer than it should be.
"burning bones" features Ben Hoagland of Extortionist and lands as one of the heavier moments on the record, the kind of track that doesn't negotiate. There's a physicality to it that demands volume. "bed_of_nails" is the lone track without a feature, and it holds its own entirely, reminding you that VCTMS doesn't need company to be compelling. In some ways it's the EP's quiet thesis statement: stripped of collaboration, the band still hits just as hard. "devil's // speak" featuring Nathan Johnson of Fox Lake leans into the moodier, atmospheric pocket VCTMS have increasingly inhabited the darkwave and industrial influences bleeding through most clearly here, turning the temperature down without reducing the tension. "trauma/response" with Aaron Matts of ten56 is the EP's most emotionally direct moment, the kind of track where Henderson's lyricism stops oscillating and just lands squarely on something true and uncomfortable. Matalone delivers it like he means it, because he does. The closer, "clip my wings," features Juan Gutierrez and sends the record out on a note that lingers longer than twenty-two minutes of music has any right to.
What makes Pain Processing II work is the same thing that's always made VCTMS work: the lyrics move between brutal self-examination and outward fury with no warning, and you believe every word of both. There's no performance of pain here. Chicago tends to produce that quality in its heavy bands, something about the winters, the sprawl, the sense that nobody outside the city is paying attention unless you make them. VCTMS have always made them pay attention. Touring alongside Crystal Lake, Veil of Maya, Cane Hill, 156/Silence, and Paleface Swiss isn't an accident. They translate on stage because the records are honest, and the records are honest because the band refuses to sand anything down. There's also something to be said for the work ethic embedded in a discography this size. Five albums deep, with Henderson writing, drumming, and running the operation simultaneously, VCTMS operate at a pace most of their peers can't sustain. That relentlessness isn't just logistical; it shows up in the music itself, in the density of ideas packed into tracks that rarely crack four minutes and never waste a second. Seven tracks, just over twenty-two minutes. It doesn't overstay. It doesn't explain itself. It just hits, and then it leaves you to figure out what to do next.
Process that pain and give this record a spin using their music video for their track twenty/eight as your gateway into it:
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