By now, it’s clear Ian Shelton doesn’t want to scream forever. The Militarie Gun frontman—who once spat slogans like “Do it faster!” as if deadlines were a religion—has spent the last two years stretching the limits of hardcore until it sounds almost unrecognizable. God Save the Gun, the band’s second full-length, is what happens when the genre’s most compulsive overachievers stop trying to prove they’re punk and start trying to prove they’re pop.
If “B A D I D E A” is any indication, they might already have written the catchiest song of 2025. Shelton’s snarled syllables bounce like rubber bullets off surf-rock drums and a sparkling synth line that sounds imported from a Doja Cat session he apparently almost sold. He kept the beat, added a deliriously dumb chorus that spells out the title, and buried his signature “oof oof” ad-lib so deep in the mix it feels like an Easter egg. The result is a paradox: the most polished Militarie Gun song yet, and also the one that most betrays their roots.
Two years ago, Life Under the Gun felt like a study in efficiency—hardcore songs that sprinted toward catharsis and didn’t waste a breath. God Save the Gun moves differently. The tempos have slowed to a pace that requires Shelton to actually sing, and sometimes even swoon. “I Won’t Murder Your Friend” and “Thought You Were Waving” are midtempo in the most un-punk way possible—mellow, melodic, nearly tender. “Daydream” reaches back to pre-psychedelic Beatles harmonies, while the acoustic guitars and syrupy synths could pass for Coldplay B-sides if Shelton’s voice weren’t still ragged at the edges. You can practically hear the band’s new engineer smiling when he EQ’d it all to perfection.
If Life Under the Gun was a testament to discipline, God Save the Gun is a study in relapse. The concept, loosely framed through interludes and voicemails, follows Shelton’s reckoning with late-blooming addiction and self-destruction. “Just throw me away!” he screams on “Fill Me With Paint,” then literally titles the next song “Throw Me Away.” The repetition feels deliberate—a loop of shame, apology, and exhaustion. Songs like “Maybe I’ll Burn My Life Down” and “Wake Up and Smile” sound like confessionals left playing in an empty rehab rec room, each one slightly too clean to sting the way it should.
There’s a perverse logic to it: God Save the Gun is Militarie Gun’s hangover album, a record that replaces brute force with sheen and swagger. The mosh-ready tension that once defined their sound has evaporated, replaced by a glossy, almost ‘90s alt-radio shimmer—Buzz Bin guitars, self-pitying hooks, and choruses that would fit between Everclear and “My Own Worst Enemy.” The aggression has been swapped for ache, and the ache polished into something dangerously hummable.
But the ambition is undeniable. Shelton still writes like a man trying to make sense of his own contradictions—a hardcore lifer who hires producers that reference Adele, a powerviolence screamer crooning over Mellotrons. Even when the songs blur together, there’s a charm in the dissonance: a band clawing at transcendence through three-chord catharsis.
“It’s never enough!” Shelton yells again near the album’s end, echoing a line from Turnstile that he’s probably sick of hearing comparisons to. But maybe that’s the point. God Save the Gun is proof that Militarie Gun have outgrown the post-hardcore box they built for themselves. Whether they’re aiming for the charts or just trying to survive another day, they’ve made the boldest, weirdest move a band like this can make: they’ve decided to feel something.
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