Secret Rule have put out "Someone Killed the Pope", the title track of their eleventh album, which Rockshots Records release on 5 February.
The song is where the band's drift becomes obvious. It follows "Edge of Control" and leans harder into metalcore than anything they have done: guitars pushed forward, electronics and cinematic orchestration underneath, and a crescendo that resolves into a breakdown rather than into a chorus.
Angela Di Vincenzo still sings it melodically, which is the tension the arrangement is built on and the reason this works better than most symphonic bands' attempts at heaviness. A breakdown under a clean voice is either a compromise or a deliberate collision, and this one is written as a collision.
Eleven albums in a decade is a pace almost nobody in this genre keeps, and the band have done it from Italy, where the symphonic and the modern ends of metal sit closer together than they do anywhere else. Rockshots have put out most of them.
The album arrives on 5 February. On the evidence of the title track it will be the heaviest one they have made.