Emo pioneers Hawthorne Heights haven’t just been surviving since the release of the iconic ‘Ohio Is For Lovers’ in 2004, they’ve been thriving, maintaining a steady release schedule culminating in 2019’s Lost Frequency. Hawthorne Heights never got old – it was you who got old. Today, the band sent forth word of an incoming full-length record, The Rain Just Follows Me, which has a confirmed street date of Friday, 10th September via Pure Noise Records.
To mark the announcement, the band have also shared the first single off the release, ‘Constant Dread’, and in doing so, offered some key insight into how they managed to weather the constant ebb and flow of trends within the alternative music space. To complete the track, Hawthorne Heights made use of the rare commodity that is Counterparts vocalist Brendan Murphy, tagging him in for a beast of a guest feature which seamlessly blends the old school with the new.
Even in spirit, the track is a fusion of both what we know we love and what we didn’t know we’d fall in love with. ‘Constant Dread’ is effortlessly and immediately a Hawthorne Heights song, but there are layers, and as they unravel we bear witness to a band that possesses a confidence that can only be accrued after so many years in the game.
Indeed, it’s not just what’s trending within the scene that Hawthorne Heights are eerily attuned to, but trends in greater society. Pointing to the ethos of the record, which by name and nature is a study of general malaise, singer JT Woodruff shares points out: “The most unbelievable part of this story is that this entire album was written and recorded BEFORE the pandemic. All of this darkness and turmoil is basically a summation of the coldest and loneliest nights I’ve tried to reconcile for the past 17 years.”
“We want to create the best songs that are accurate depictions of our lives and connect to other people through our songs,” he continues. “I hope this record helps people understand that others out there are thinking like them – and thinking about them. Everyone gets poured on in life; we just want to provide an umbrella,” Woodruff adds. Ergo, if you felt that their erstwhile material resonated with you as a youth, just wait until you hear their hard-earned stories of adulthood.
