Every single song SeeYouSpaceCowboy have released since forming in 2016 has been deeply rooted in the life experience and trauma of frontwoman Connie Sgarbossa. It’s one of the things that makes the San Diego band’s music so compelling and visceral, because those oftentimes harrowing experiences flow through its veins. Whether that’s existential anguish, substance addiction or suicidal ideation (and attempts), Sgarbossa has never been afraid to detail her pain and torment in excruciating detail. She holds nothing back, and combined with the band’s intensely dark (and darkly intense) blend of sasscore, punk, mathcore and metalcore, it’s always made for profound and devastating listening. Coup De Grâce is no exception to that rule. The band’s third album, it follows on from 2019’s The Correlation Between Entrance And Exit Wounds and 2021’s The Romance Of Affliction. But unlike those two records, which were unadulterated, no-holds-barred accounts of her life at the time, Coup De Grâce takes a different approach to its lyrics. Rather than Sgarbossa baring her most private and innermost thoughts for all to hear, on these 12 songs they’re funneled through the lives of fictional characters within a noir-inspired world of the singer’s invention.