Terrifying Girls’ High School
Photo Credit 📷 : @ellie.mpg
The Canadian gods of sass have returned to defend screamo with a brand new album.
Fuck the rule book, forget the socks, this is Terrifying Girls’ High School at their best and most avant-garde. The Canadian band’s experimentation has never been limited and this has never been more clear than on their new album “Sad Boys’ Swimming Hole.” Turning their guitar tone extraterrestrial on this new jam and composing riffs that are more akin to mythical creatures than they are to leads and rhythms. The whole album hits like an unhinged sci-fi theater show that demands the participation of its audience to dance along.
Kick in the albums’ intro track with a mathy bass line and god-only-knows-how-many effect pedals were used to have made the guitar tone sound like an alien invasion. Then let the hi-hats dance right off the pole and queue in the snarkiest vocals in the game. The Vancouver sass overlords are still here defending screamo and we’re happy to help by debuting their brand new single “Do You Have Games On Your Phone?”
The upcoming album is adventurous, even for a band that’s already known to colour outside the lines, and their guitarist Miggy tells Not Just A Phase that the album itself is a conglomeration of previously well known planets as well as undiscovered new galaxies.
“This is a collection of unreleased songs written over the span of a decade. The first song the founding members wrote is on there, as well as the newest unreleased material. It’s our first full release with songs written with our bassist Edward. This is our first release with some songs in different tunings. There might be some sounds and ideas in here that we never try again.”
While clearly inspired by the GOATs of sass, the Blood Brothers, TGHS writing style expands with each release, as does their wide range of influences upon their complex writing style of “Piling different small parts we have on top of each other.” Miggy tells us that “sometimes one person brings a part to practice and we layer on top of that. Occasionally someone will bring a whole song they wrote on drums or guitar, and we flesh it out at practice.”
By the time this comes out, the Girls will have returned from their first tour, (One night in Chilliwack), with plans of “trying to gauge the viability of a western Canada tour eventually and likely an album release show soon! We're almost done writing the next album. Going forward we'd like to start releasing some songs just as singles. It might be cool to play even further from home than Chilliwack. Another province??”.
On being more than just a High School, the band has always been big defenders of Screamo (Screamo with a capital “S”) and they soldier on to do their part in promoting our entire community.
“EVEN IF YOU DONT FUCK WITH US, PLEASE DEFEND SCREAMO. MAKE A ZINE, START A BAND, SUPPORT THE SCENE. IT FEELS LIKE ART IS GETTING WORSE BECAUSE THE ALGORITHIMS ARE DESIGNED TO FEED YOU SLOP.
MAKE GOOD STUFF, INTERACT WITH GOOD STUFF AND IT WILL MAKE THE ALGORTIHIMS PROMOTE THAT GOOD STUFF BECAUSE PEOPLE ARE ACTUALLY MAKING GOOD ART ALL THE TIME. YOUR JOB IS TO SHINE A LIGHT ON THE GOOD STUFF”.
- HENRIETTA, @TGHSKRAMZ
The bands friend “Goreshit” (legendary internet mastermind and breakcore DJ) mixed and mastered the album and we think it fucking slaps. The new album “Sad Boys Swimming Hole” is set to release digitally, on cassette, and on streaming services via Emocat Records on September 26th.
Terrifying Girls High School is Henrietta on vocals, Miggy on guitar and vocals, Edward on bass and Matt on drums.
Follow them on bandcamp here : Terrifying Girls High School
Writer : @just_reidz
Editor : @garevthistle
09/22/25
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