‘Have You’ Heard? JUNE TURNS BLACK Are Redefining Metalcore

Do the most hype Romanian metalcore sweethearts/darlings even need an introduction at this point? Thankfully for me, no. June Turns Black seemed to explode out of nowhere a couple of years ago. With a mixture of brutality and ethereality, their sound encompasses a lot that is popular right now but manages to blend it together in a style that’s very unique to them.

Look, take a moment to collect yourself, I had to as well. I started listening to it at loud volume, not knowing what to expect and as it hit, you could see all my clothes and hair blasted to the chair by the sheer air pressure busting from the speakers. Straddling the melodic and the harsh, but reining things in, this is probably the perfect introduction to what June Turns Black is capable of.

“‘Have You’ is the song that closes our “Wavebreaker” album and is about a revelry in toxicity. It is told from the point of view of a person who goes from relationship to relationship, consuming everyone along the way,” says the band.

They add: “Whether it’s their upbringing, issues, or the world around them, these are motives used to justify themselves, but it doesn’t make their actions any less hurtful. They give you “the last taste of heaven” before they “send us straight back to hell,” and there is joy and acceptance in that for them.

From a musical point of view, ‘Have You’ is a bridging song; it exists between the first and second eras of our band, as it features more clean singing, hooks, and infectious grooves than our previous songs, but it still has moments that are quite heavy. Our first era was focused on an emotional exploration of our issues, while our next one is about diving deep into our darkest and most intrusive thoughts and experiences.”

If you have been keeping tabs on June Turns Black as they dropped singles in the lead-up to their album then chances you already know whether you like them or not. If, however, you have been the proverbial ostrich and are unfamiliar with them, then this track will reward you if you open yourself up to it.

The real strength of June Turns Black is their ability to mix the heavy & heartfelt. ‘Have You’ is a rich tapestry that weaves together many moods and tones, creating an atmosphere that is devastating both emotionally and, in the skull, crushingly heavy musical sense.

June Turns Black live @Constelatii Rock / Photo by Mihai Ene

In their video, the band says: “‘Have You’ is our most ambitious music video yet. We really took our penchant for DIY ethics and prop construction to the next level, completely remodeling a room from our apartment into the set. Rach, our singer, dedicated months of painstaking work to create a physical world that you can see and touch – a space outside of time where the music video takes place.

From the concept to the designs, the video is full of artistic inspiration from Greek, Egyptian, Chinese, and Japanese mythology, as well as movies like Kill Bill, John Wick, and Resident Evil.

The character in the song is personified by the Shakespearean usurper, who will stop at nothing to dethrone Lord Akuma (the lord of death). We can see that her fate is intertwined with Akuma’s at the beginning, being his second-in-command as people try to cross into the underworld or, in the case of The Traveller (who appears in the middle of the video), ask for favors but are found out and executed.

It is a dark tale of plotting, greed, and betrayal told through lush visuals and composition,with every frame being almost literally a painting. Coming back to the idea of Have You being a bridge between eras for our band, we can see that by the end, the Usurper has achieved her goal and assumed control, representing giving in to one’s darkest temptations and announcing the coming of the next stage of our musical and thematic journey.“

They continue, “This was not a project without its difficulties. Initially started in October of 2023 with our June Crew (a small collective of very talented and close friends) under the moniker Nightshift Division (the visual arm of everything we do), we went through construction, reshoots, post-production, long, almost never-ending filming days and invested so much time and effort into this video to elevate our artistry to the next level.

Every detail of the set and prop building has been labored over and done by us, and with a lack of resources and spaces that every young band struggles with, we decided to convert our literal apartment into the set of a short film. Because we are incredibly critical of our work, we ended up doing multiple reshoots and re-edits until we got as close to the vision as we could and achieved he best results possible. Then, Rach and Cezar (our bass player) spent months in post-production, going through each frame and retouching, painting, masking, and enhancing the raw footage by hand to achieve a glossy, fantasy, and high-quality final result.”

June Turns Black not only meets all expectations but also subverts them, and with ‘Have You’ they have created a remarkable body of work. If you are not on board with June Turns Black, then now would be a very good time to change that.