Catch Your Breath’s Not Broken Enough Is a Metalcore Monster

Catch Your Breath push harder, heavier and more emotionally exposed on their second album, Not Broken Enough.

Catch Your Breath have spent the last few years steadily forcing their way into the modern metalcore conversation. With Not Broken Enough, the Texas four-piece sound like a band ready to take another significant step forward.

Arriving on August 28 via Thriller Records, the follow-up to 2023’s Shame On Me is an 11-track collection built around heartbreak, anger, regret and eventually some form of acceptance. 

And while there’s plenty of emotion here, Catch Your Breath haven’t forgotten that sometimes you just want a metalcore record to absolutely flatten you.

Opening track “Contaminated” sets the tone brilliantly. Atmospheric electronics and a reversed-tape intro create an almost cinematic opening before the heavier side of the band begins creeping through. Josh Mowery’s ability to move between soaring cleans and vicious screams remains one of Catch Your Breath’s biggest strengths, and throughout Not Broken Enough he’s given plenty of opportunities to showcase both. 

Then things start getting considerably nastier.

“Red Alert” turns towards crushing riffs, synths and harsher vocals, while “Blood Money” is Catch Your Breath operating firmly in modern metalcore territory. Huge guitars, breakdowns and gutturals sit alongside the polished production that has become increasingly prominent within the genre. 

“Carnivore” is another highlight. There’s an infectious groove underneath all the aggression, while Mowery delivers one of the album’s strongest vocal performances. It’s heavy without sacrificing melody — something Catch Your Breath repeatedly get right across the record. 

But Not Broken Enough works best when the heaviness actually has something behind it.

This is fundamentally a breakup album.

“Control” captures the feeling of giving too much of yourself to another person, while “Rewind” shifts into something considerably more vulnerable. The latter moves from reminiscing about a failed relationship to wishing it had never happened at all, with piano and a more stripped-back opening giving the song some genuine weight. 

That emotional thread continues through “Lost”, “Dark” and “The Basement”, and it gives the album a sense of progression rather than simply feeling like eleven disconnected songs. As the record moves forward, anger gradually gives way to reflection.

There is, however, one thing holding Not Broken Enough back from being truly exceptional.

Catch Your Breath are operating in an increasingly crowded corner of modern metalcore. The combination of electronics, enormous production, atmospheric passages, clean choruses and punishing breakdowns is incredibly effective, but it’s also familiar territory.

There are moments where you can hear echoes of bands elsewhere in the modern scene, and Catch Your Breath still feel like they’re searching for the one unmistakable ingredient that makes a listener immediately say: that is Catch Your Breath. It’s a criticism also raised elsewhere around the album, despite the obvious progression from their debut. 

The closing stretch nevertheless contains some of the album’s best material.

“[Gen]inside” brings Kemi Kehoe into the mix, contrasting her vocals against Mowery’s harsher delivery before “Hollow Dreams” brings everything full circle. The reversed sounds from the beginning return, but emotionally the record has moved somewhere completely different.

It doesn’t necessarily end with everything fixed. It feels more like finally accepting that healing can begin.

And that ultimately sums up Not Broken Enough.

Catch Your Breath haven’t reinvented metalcore here, but they’ve made a bigger, heavier and more confident version of themselves. The breakdowns hit, the choruses are enormous and underneath all that polished modern production is an album with a surprisingly coherent emotional journey.

There’s still another level for Catch Your Breath to reach — particularly when it comes to establishing a sound that is completely their own — but Not Broken Enough suggests they’re getting considerably closer.

Bigmouth Rating: 7.5/10

Not Broken Enough is released August 28, 2026 via Thriller Records.