Bite To Break formed earlier this year in Wiener Neustadt, Austria, and “In Between” is their debut single, which makes the confidence on display here genuinely surprising. The band has coined its own term for what it’s doing, “Grindkoa,” a fusion of metalcore, hardcore, death metal, and deathcore, and the song backs that description up by favoring crushing riffs and a dark atmosphere over straightforward aggression. Lyrically, it sits with the torment of existing in the gap between life and death, hope and despair, isolation and decay, summed up in the line “I’m not dead, I’m not alive, condemned to breathe where shadows thrive.” It’s bleak material, but the band channels it into something closer to emotional honesty than pure brutality.
I would have never guessed this is the band’s first single, because the chemistry on display here is incredible. The writing does come off as experimental at points; you can hear them clearly trying things out, but in the best possible way. There’s a sense of a band still figuring out exactly what its sound is going to be, and rather than that reading as unfinished, the playing itself is mature enough to sound confident and powerful even while the identity is still forming. That’s a difficult balance for a first release to strike, sounding open to exploration while still delivering the kind of intense, atmospheric heaviness that a genre built on this many influences demands.
“In Between” is the first of three singles the band plans to release through 2026, building toward a debut EP later in the year, and it’s already picked up international attention through reviews and playlist placements well beyond Austria’s borders. On this evidence, that attention is warranted, and Bite To Break look like a genuinely exciting name to watch as the rest of this rollout plays out.
