Boundaries Preview Yearning: The Unbeautiful After Ahead of July 17, Produced by Drew Fulk

Connecticut metalcore band Boundaries release their fourth studio album, Yearning: The Unbeautiful After, on July 17 via Sumerian Records. Ever Metal's early review, published July 7, calls the record's guitars "dirty, down-tuned" and "dissonant," with sub-drops "heavy enough to topple buildings" (Ever Metal). The review also flags a dual vocal attack driving the record, a "fierce mid-range growl" paired against what the reviewer calls "deranged shrieks of agony." The review lands on a 7 out of 10, praising tracks like "May This Pain Never Leave" and "Unequal Whole" for pulling in the melodic, early-2000s metalcore energy of bands like Unearth and August Burns Red, while flagging the ambitious 14-song tracklist as occasionally repetitive.

Boundaries is an American metalcore band from Hartford, Connecticut, formed in 2013 (Wikipedia). The band's current lineup is vocalist Matthew McDougal, guitarists Cory Emond and Cody DelVecchio, bassist Nathan Calcagno, and drummer and clean vocalist Tim Sullivan. Boundaries signed to Unbeaten Records in 2018 and released their first label-backed project, My Body in Bloom, in February 2019. Their studio catalog runs from 2020's Your Receding Warmth through 2022's Burying Brightness and 2024's Death Is Little More, the latter documented in a 55-minute tour film the band released chronicling life on the road behind it (Grande Rock).

In March 2026, Sumerian Records announced Boundaries as a new signing, paired with the single "Skies Cast Amber Black." A month later, on April 24, the band released "Death Will Follow Me" and announced Yearning: The Unbeautiful After. Vocalist Matthew McDougal has framed the record around loss. "This time last year was one of significant sorrow for this band and many others," he said. "The tragic accident that took the lives of our friends so suddenly has since had us in a state of perpetual mourning. The evidence of such and of life's unforgivable violence is found throughout this newest album" (Grande Rock).

Yearning: The Unbeautiful After was recorded in fall 2025 with producer Drew Fulk, credited as WZRD BLD (Grande Rock). Fulk's discography runs from Motionless In White's Disguise (2019) and Scoring the End of the World (2022) through Ice Nine Kills' The Silver Scream 2: Welcome to Horrorwood (2021) and a 2023 Grammy nomination for producing Disturbed's "Bad Man" (Wikipedia). Fulk's established production signature, per his own CYS profile, defaults to Drop C# and Drop C for modern-metalcore rhythm guitar, with a .011 to .054 gauge as the reference point for holding that tuning tight against dense, layered mixes.

Fulk's credit list also includes both of Yearning: The Unbeautiful After's guest acts: he produced Make Them Suffer's How to Survive a Funeral (2020) and The Plot In You's Dispose (2018) (Wikipedia). Whether that history factored into either guest spot isn't confirmed anywhere on the record, but it's a real overlap in his catalog worth flagging.

Boundaries' own confirmed tuning isn't public, so treat this as producer and genre context, not a documented band spec. But Ever Metal's description of "dirty, down-tuned" and dissonant guitars sits comfortably in the register Fulk's other credits typically occupy. Fulk's own CYS profile describes his production signature as polished low-end glue and layered rhythm-guitar architecture: tight, articulate guitar tracks built to hold their own against dense, pop-shaped mixes rather than simply piling on more gain, a description that lines up with Ever Metal's read of this record.

For a 25.5-inch scale electric at that tuning, CYS's editorial pick is the Ernie Ball Beefy Slinky Cobalt, .011 to .054, built for Drop C and Drop C# rhythm work. Fulk's own CYS profile separately calls out the standard nickel Beefy Slinky in the same gauge as his production-lane fit, so either wire type is a reasonable starting point at this tuning.

Yearning: The Unbeautiful After carries two guest spots. Landon Tewers, lead singer of metalcore band The Plot In You, appears on track nine, "Crowned and Crucified." Australian band Make Them Suffer guests on the album's fourth track. Both features were confirmed in the album's April 24 announcement and corroborated by Ever Metal's July 7 review of the finished record (Grande Rock, Ever Metal). Neither publication specifies whether the guests contribute vocals, guitar, or both.

Yes. Boundaries spent April and May 2026 touring North America with The Amity Affliction and August Burns Red, then crossed to Europe for a run of festival dates in June, including Rock im Park, Rock am Ring, Download Festival, and Jera on Air, plus the Impericon and Vainstream festivals (Grande Rock). They're next confirmed for Warped Tour in Long Beach, California, July 25 and 26, and Louder Than Life in Louisville, Kentucky, on September 19.