Kate Davies has a motto for how Pupil Slicer get things done: “Work hard. Die.” They’re half-joking, but it perfectly frames the band’s recent past. Last Friday, Pupil Slicer released the most exciting, creative, intriguing, flamboyant, complex, layered and fascinating album you’ll hear in 2023, Blossom. Though it’s a record that on paper can be broken down into ingredients ranging from grindcore, black metal, indie-rock, death metal, shoegaze and post-metal, with notes in the margins referencing everything from trap beats to cut-glass, Björk-ish beauty, to knowingly over-digitised sci-fi noises, and things that legitimately have no previous reference point, it’s actually all and none of these things. It’s also about to make Pupil Slicer one of the most talked about metal b...