B-Side Guys

Mike Hunau and Kevin Donlon spent their Halifax years selling 60,000 copies of A Writer’s Reference, debuting records at number one on Billboard’s Heatseekers Chart, and sharing stages with My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. That’s a particular kind of post-hardcore pedigree, and Great Danes don’t ignore it so much as use it as a launching pad for something with considerably more menace.

“Body in the Marsh” is a statement of intent from a debut album, Nomad Empire, that arrives with something to prove. The pop-punk melodicism that defined Halifax is still in the foundation, but the structure here is built for a different kind of impact. The heavy riffs carry real weight, the dynamic range between the melodic passages and the harder sections creates genuine tension, and the breakdown that closes the track lands as a full commitment to where the band is headed rather than a genre concession.

That breakdown is worth dwelling on. “When I tell you put the body in the marsh” starts as a line and becomes a chant, the growl intensifying with each repetition until the instruction stops being metaphorical and starts feeling genuinely unhinged. It’s the moment the song reveals what it’s actually capable of, and it reframes everything that came before it as setup.

As a first move, choosing a song that ends by telling you to hide a body with increasing conviction is a credible way to announce that the Halifax days are in the rearview.