ALBUM REVIEW: STOP DESTROYING THE THINGS YOU LOVE BY SUNBLEACHED
Reviewed by Cecilia Pattison-Levi
Release date 18 September 2026
Brisbane alternative rock band Sunbleached have recorded a great rock album with flourishes of metalcore highlights in ‘Stop Destroying The Things You Love’. Josh Baker (vocals), Bradley Maddaford (guitar/vocals), Kaden Perkinson (bass), Brent Ottley (guitar) and Izaac Calrow (drums) bring the melancholy and bleached-out ennui to sonic life.
The album opens with the guitar distortion and thumping drums of ‘Delicate Places We Hide’. The vocal layering and the clean and dark vocals intertwine on a beautifully scuzzy and short, emotional track. There is more melodic and distorted, atmospheric “fever dream” of instrumentation and beautiful “melancholic nightmare” vocals on ‘Flesh Heaven’, like a "comedown". It's a great song: dark and bleak. The “sickly sweet” of 'Slow Burn' is a screamcore song with huge melodic vocals. “It's a sign of the times” when you are “swept off your feet” and “alive”. But “I'll be your slow burn” as the protagonist plays the long game. The song is an album highlight. The vocal melody starts this song ‘Everyone Leaves’ quickly before the instrumentation hits. Dissociation and fallout from relationships “burns into my brain” as we keep “turning and fade away” and the song is another album highlight.
The dreamy ‘Maybe I'll Come Around’ is a great rock-shoegaze ballad about “lapses in judgement”. The echoing guitar riff of 'Star Crossed Lover' is a slow burn as the tension builds through the guitars and the whispered vocals that are low in the mix and sound like paranoia as the lyrics about “draining my blood”, as the reverb and distorted sounds echo. That sonic soundscape continues into ‘Blue Like You’ as you, the listener, “fall through the perfect moment” as the “clouds sink” and dark vocal fry "like you", adds accusing menace along with the off-kilter guitar riff. The brooding and "wounding" ‘Painchamber’ cuts in with a huge vocal scream as the guitars chug away, luscious vocals and the dark vocal engage in a call and echo response. “Did I forget my place” as the woozy melody breaks into dark aggression.
The title track ‘Stop Destroying The Things You Love’ follows and the lyricism is about “learning to love” yourself and being there for others and to “catch you if you fall”. It's a big and emotional song with a great guitar riff and solo near the end. The hazy ‘Dissolve And Bloom’ is “just another sad story” as it asks the listener to release “the chains”. The loneliness of the song is coloured in shades “of blue” and “colours of you”. The song is another album highlight. The album closes with the haunting and echoing ‘Sweet Pea’ with its slow-tempo brushed drumbeats and intoxicated vocals before the pace quickens a little, into a sonic dreamscape of light and shade as the echo fades out.
This album ‘Stop Destroying The Things You Love' is a sophisticated and emotional dark rock trip.
