Unless you’ve been under a rock this summer (and who could blame you? It’s probably very relaxing) there’s no way you could have missed the rise of Reclusé. The brief backstory: Daniel P. Carter, ex-Hexes guy turned Radio 1 DJ, joined up with Soren Bryce of Tummyache to bring scream-heavy, mercurial and beautiful noise to every festival possible, winning armies of fans along the way with only three singles behind them. If you fell in love with their brutal sound in the seven months since their first release, you’ll both love and hate Reclusé’s full length debut, ‘The World Can’t Take Much More’. The studio brings the beauty hidden under their layers of live distortion into the light and presents us upfront with the delicacy we always guessed was part of their sound. These thirteen tracks testify to just how right you were about your new favourite band.
Our first glimpse into the world of Reclusé came through the elusive ‘A Muted TV’, which opens ‘The World Can’t Take Much More’. The shouts and rage which we associate with Bryce’s unflinching stage show are out in full force from the get-go, but so is the dreamy, experimental quality that the duo bring out to play. With enough space to appreciate the melodic half of their sound, we finally get the opportunity to take it all in and bask in both sides of their vision, the incendiary and the thoughtful. ‘Belly Of The Whale’, which rapidly follows, is pure post-punk contemplation, the kind of song which would soundtrack the end of the world when it implodes in a sigh. Then comes the near-hardcore intensity of ‘Isolationist’, a track that would aptly soundtrack the ten minutes before the apocalypse when everyone is still throwing bricks. That’s the great, and very polarising, thing about Reclusé: they’re a band of two halves, literally and figuratively, and those two angles have been stitched together, often within the same song, to create something unique.
It’s obvious that ‘The World Can’t Take Much More’ is designed to be listened to as one continuous piece, with lines between songs artificially drawn on the continent of the album as a whole. ‘A Muted TV’ blurs into the unexpected indie joy and optimism of ‘Stain’, which then drifts into the crashing autumnal desperation of ‘Golden Ratio’. Reclusé have such a distinct vision for this record, and themselves, which we’re only just starting to understand, and it’s all lashed together with razor-sharp guitar and haunting vocals. There’s so much to appreciate when they let themselves drift, as they do on the grunge-influenced ‘Cold Candles’, Bryce’s every line sounding like a prophecy which we should be taking notes on. For every track which feels like it could be dragging you down or sending you into a rage, there’s another that bursts with sunshine, and they’re frequently paired together to jar you into discomfort: see ‘Honey From Lions’, which positively radiates warmth, compared to the prowling ‘Dogs’. While this might be a single long vision, it’s been designed to shock then comfort you in equal and alternating measure.
As debut albums of 2026 go, there can’t be many out there which are as intriguing, complex and impossible to pin down as Reclusé’s ‘The World Can’t Take Much More’. It’s intelligent and focuses on creating micro-atmospheres that blur into one another to create a whole universe of your own imagining. There’s joy and comfort, but also fury and frustration, and you can never predict where each song – or even each second to the next – will take you. This album will take you by the hand and lead you into a new world, which in turn might be scary but will send you spinning into amazement all the same. Just trust in Reclusé and where they’re heading.
Kate Allvey