Review: The Callous Daoboys – I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven

Style: Metalcore, mathcore (mixed vocals)
Recommended for fans of: Dillinger Escape Plan, Every Time I Die, Johnny Booth
Country: Georgia, United States
Release date: 16 May 2025

As a genre, mathcore often sounds like bands are throwing everything they’ve got at the wall just to see what sticks: syncopation, polymeters, dissonance, shit; take your pick. When bands don’t wield these components with careful aim, it leaves the wall a garish mosaic of incoherently smeared elements and dangling concepts. That said, when mathcore’s done well, and its rhythmic rebelliousness and explosive cacophony are anchored in abiding, ardent homage to its punk-rock parentage, the result is less a splatter of unchecked aggression and more a display of challenging, charged artistry. The Callous Daoboys’ previous offerings, however, have struck me as a bit too much shit-on-the-wall. Drawing on unmistakable influences from mathcore titans like Dillinger Escape Plan and Botch, the Daoboys stacked even more elements on top of genre staples like fluctuating rhythms, prevailingly harsh vocals, and intemperate aggression, adding in more synths than is typical of the genre, highly segmented compositions, and a dose of nu-metal. The resulting auditory fracas landed a little too frenetically for my ears. Back with their third full-length album, I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven, the question becomes: has the chaos crystallized?

I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven’s spoken word introduction frames the album as a cultural relic discovered three hundred years in the future and provides a sort of mission statement for the themes to be explored within. The narrator lists “heartbreak, anguish, frustration, infidelity, lust, addiction, divorce, and suffering”, before frontman Carson Pace’s screams burst open the first real track, “Schizophrenia Legacy”. Gangly guitar riffs hulk and lurch across the track’s shifting metres, setting a raucous pace for the album that roils at an urgently adrenalized boil.

This rawly emotional bombardment is punishing until it’s rewarding; overwhelming until it coheres; unrelenting until, six tracks in, it relents. The lush instrumental opening of “Lemon” provides some respite, but it’s no ballad, with insistently rhythmic guitar and almost jungly synths that call to mind The White Lotus’ subtly unsettling soundtrack. “Lemon” slides imperceptibly into the similarly understated “Body Horror for Birds”. These two tracks’ impact may be diminished by stacking them back-to-back in the midst of the album’s shrieking onslaught, but this brief respite in calmer waters is rich in reward: some of the more melodically lavish moments here, particularly from the synths and violin, are terrific. 

Pace describes I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven as a kind of personal artifact of his twenties, a “snapshot of 24-27”, and the Daoboys abide by this visceral personalness steadfastly. For all its boundary-pushing and shapeshifting, I Don’t Want to See You In Heaven rings with a familiar kind of MTV-coded emo/punk nostalgia. Listening to tracks like “Distracted by the Mona Lisa”, I could be standing on a stretch of sun-baked asphalt outside an early-aughts strip mall, showing a CD of this album to my friends as we pass by the video rental shop. 

The vocal performance takes centre stage, saturated with harrowed angst that is authentic if also at times lyrically corny¹. Trying to divorce the emotional resonance from Pace’s technical delivery would be foolish: his screams and rock-solid emo-tinted clean vocals throb with each of the emotions from the album’s opening mission statement in turn. The supporting musical cast wields everything from funky bass lines and spider-like scrabbling guitars to wrenchingly poignant violin and silky-smooth saxophone with skill, sometimes all within a few minutes. My one real gripe is that Amber Christman’s periodic violin interludes seem to be underserved by the album’s composition; if you’re going to have a violinist on force as a full-fledged member of your band, you should let them contribute more than just ornamental fringe. 

At fifty-seven minutes, I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven starts to stretch at the seams. For instance, nearly three minutes of rippling wordless vocal effects and delicate instrumentals could be cut from the start of closer “Country Song in Reverse” at no loss. But I wonder if the poise and patience that somewhat bloats the album’s runtime is part of what makes it work for me. While disparity and incongruity could be considered hallmarks of mathcore as a genre, they’re wielded more skillfully here than on the Callous Daoboys’ previous outings: transitions are less abrupt, and different ideas are given time to develop, instead being chucked at the wall one after another.

In pulling their chaos into a more deliberate shape, The Callous Daoboys have made something that sticks. The balance between emotional volatility and compositional control is what sets this fiercely personal yet tightly executed record apart from their earlier work.  I Don’t Want to See You in Heaven channels that timeless, angst-ridden need for catharsis through a funnel of technical precision and ambition, and the result is sure to leave a mark, whether you want it to or not.

Recommended tracks: Two-Headed Trout, Lemon, III. Country Song in Reverse
You may also like: The Number Twelve Looks Like You, Candiria, Benthos
Final verdict: 7.5/10

Related links: Bandcamp | Spotify | Official Website | Facebook | Instagram

Label: MNRK Heavy – Facebook | Official Website

The Callous Daoboys is:
Jackie Buckalew – Bass, backing vocals
Maddie Caffrey – Guitars
Amber Christman – Violin
Matthew Hague – Drums, backing vocals
Daniel Hodsdon – Guitars, backing vocals
Carson Pace – Lead vocals, synthesizers

With guests:
Rich Castillo – Saxophone 
Justin Young – Narration
Jake Howard – Additional production 
Adam Easterling – Guest vocals
Tyler Syphertt – Additional vocals
Ryan Hunter — Guest vocals
Dawson Beck – Backing vocals
Allan Romero – Trumpets, trombones, and saxophone
Andrew Spann – Guest vocals

1. “You should know by now that it’s not cool to wear metalcore t-shirts around your family / It doesn’t make you interesting at all” is a little on the nose, no? ↩︎