The Long Way to In My Head: Bite To Break and a Cymbal Sale
The Wiener Neustadt Five-Piece Follows a Summer Debut with a Slam and Hardcore Second Single
Patrick Manzey had one week. He met Bite To Break through a contact at their Wiener Neustadt rehearsal space and found three finished instrumentals waiting. Seven days later, he had lyrics for all three and was on stage with the band at a local party. That week is where the road to the second Bite To Break single, In My Head, begins.
Bite To Break are in the playlist below with In My Head, and the five-piece’s features so far sit on the Bite To Break artist profile. The single came to this desk through PopHits.Co Music Charts, which verifies independent artists and places their releases across its network of music news desks. Listen to it first, then keep reading for the week that completed the band.
A Cymbal Sale and an Online Forum Completed the Line-Up in January 2026
That party was the first time the five-piece played as a complete line-up. It also closed a search that had taken years. The Austrian band date the project to 2023, yet they only completed the line-up in January 2026. Guitarist Lawrence Hildebrand and drummer Konrad Korntheur first crossed paths at a jam through a mutual connection, then lost touch. Years later they met again, and something clicked. From then on, they met several times a week to write and experiment.
The rest of the band arrived by stranger routes, as the band tell it on their official website. Guitarist Philipp Pecolt came to the rehearsal space to collect a cymbal. He had bought it from Konrad on a second-hand marketplace. A conversation about music turned into a jam, and he stayed. Meanwhile, the band found bassist Michael Schwarz through an online musicians’ forum. He brought a taste for extreme heaviness. That pushed the band to test how far an idea could go before it stopped being heavy.
Seen from here, that rushed first week reads as a method rather than an accident. Over the summer, the debut single In Between drew reviews from Rock Era Magazine and Lelahel Metal. Then, on 1 August 2026, they played the Rock & Metal Open Air in the Bürgermeistergarten in Wiener Neustadt. The local paper MeinBezirk described their set as hard breakdowns, aggressive screams and melodic elements combined into an energetic sound. A sudden downpour hit the garden that evening, but most of the crowd stayed.
In My Head Lets the Hardcore Side of the Bite To Break Grindkoa Formula Lead
Bite To Break released In My Head on 17 September 2026 as the follow-up single. It came out alongside In Between as a double single. At three minutes and 32 seconds, it runs about half a minute shorter than In Between. That track sits just over four minutes.
The band file what they play under a word of their own, Grindkoa. Their shorthand defines it as slam plus hardcore plus death metal. On In My Head, though, the hardcore part of that sum carries the most weight. The Brazilian site Roadie Metal heard well-made metalcore that often lets its hardcore vein run strongest. It also singled out the vocal dynamics and guitars that balance weight with melody.
In other words, the single keeps the trade the band advertise in their own bio. The drums drive it, and the riffs are as filthy as that bio promises. Patrick Manzey, meanwhile, pushes his vocals to their limit. Even so, the emphasis has shifted since the debut. Rock Era Magazine heard In Between favour crushing riffs and a dark atmosphere over straightforward aggression. Lelahel Metal, for its part, pointed to a blues-inspired guitar break in the middle of it. In My Head, by contrast, is shorter and leans harder on its hardcore pulse. The band have also posted a guitar playthrough of the song on their YouTube channel.
Photo by Busy Shutters: Bite To Break at the Rock & Metal Open Air, 1 August 2026.
NewMusic.News’s curator team: “A second single is where a band shows it can repeat a result on purpose. In My Head does it in three and a half minutes, and it changes the emphasis without changing the band.”
Three Reference Points From Byron Bay, Los Angeles and New Jersey
Mexico City’s Punkeando listed the band’s own reference points. They include All That Remains, August Burns Red, Parkway Drive, The Ghost Inside and Fit For An Autopsy. Those last three map this single most closely. First, Parkway Drive made the breakdown the centre of gravity on Horizons in 2007. Bite To Break, likewise, describe themselves as a band built around crushing breakdowns. Next, The Ghost Inside kept hardcore urgency at the heart of Get What You Give in 2012. That is the vein Roadie Metal heard running strongest here. Finally, Fit For An Autopsy showed on The Sea of Tragic Beasts in 2019 that deathcore weight can carry melody. The guitars on In My Head strike that same balance.
What In My Head Answers for Bite To Break Before Death Bringer Completes the EP
A debut single can be a lucky first draft. A second one answers whether the first was deliberate. In My Head answers it for Bite To Break by moving the weight without losing the identity. The riffs stay heavy and the vocals stay extreme, while the song tilts towards the hardcore end of their formula.
The answer also has a date attached. Death Bringer, due on 16 October 2026, is the final track of the three-track EP In Between. As a result, In My Head is the middle chapter of the band’s first record. Beyond that, the band say the next songs are already lined up and ready to be recorded.
Live, the next stop is the Escape Metal Bar in Vienna on 25 October. After that comes a hometown show at MÄX in Wiener Neustadt on 21 November. It sits on a Bandhouse Live Syndicate bill called Distortion. In fact, two members of that association were in the crowd at the open air in August. By then, they had already booked the band for November.
So listeners raised on Parkway Drive and The Ghost Inside should start with In My Head. It is the slam-leaning end of that sound, from a band at the start of its story. After that, In Between is the companion track, and Death Bringer completes the set in October.
Stream In My Head on Apple Music or Tidal, and hear both tracks of the double single on Spotify. Follow Bite To Break on Spotify, Apple Music, their YouTube channel, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
