"When it's looking dark, punch the future in the face," Kurt Vile advised us many years ago. Few bands have taken on this challenge with more gusto than Home Front, the fearless synth punk duo from Edmonton whose sophomore album, Watch It Die, arrives with the violent catharsis of landing a haymaker to the teeth of death."In this time of madness / How does this beauty survive?" Graeme MacKinnon shouts on the album's soaring title track. The answer, it seems, is to cram into a studio with your best friends and crank up your instruments until they're about to give way.It's a formula that MacKinnon (vocals, guitar and bass) and his bandmate Clint Frazier (synths, key, drums and programming) first explored on Home Front's acclaimed 2023 debut, Games of Power, merging elements of post-punk, new wave and industrial rock into what they call "bootwave": a gritty subgenre evoking the cadence of heavy boots stomping on frozen concrete; of crunching through a layer of snow, toes nearly frozen. Filled with battering drum machines and sparkling arpeggios, the record was thrillingly heavy and distinctly Edmonton, reflecting the charming weirdness that hums quietly beneath the city's infamously hard exterior. Being unleashed at the precipice of winter and amid the chaotic throes of late-state capitalism, the follow-up feels like a supercharged version of the debut — its lyrics and music injected with a newfound sense of urgency, elevated by an almost desperate desire to hold on to life as the systems that sustain it disintegrate."I'm not afraid to die / It's the living part that's hard," MacKinnon sings on the bittersweet "Eulogy," doing his best Robert Smith impression as the band pay tribute to "friends gone too soon." Frazier's drums pummel the anti-capitalist "For the Children (F*ck All)" frantically forth like an underwater hydraulic press, setting the pace for a galvanizing anthem: "Fuck all is all that's left for us!" With "Empire," the band bask in the solace of brotherhood from their perch on the icy prairies, watching as America crumbles slowly into the sea and threatens to pull us with it.Most albums that are this high temp and contain this much shouting eventually grow tiring or repetitive. Remarkably, Home Front manage to avoid this fate, deftly gliding between different sounds and genres — "Kiss the Sky" makes liberal use of the cowbell to create the band's danciest track yet, and "Dancing with Anxiety" sounds like a hidden B-side from Nine Inch Nails' Pretty Hate Machine — while adorning each song with subtle electronic flourishes or maniacal drums blasts.The result is a dozen highly listenable songs that don't sound like anything else in the world of rock music right now. Much of this stems from the playful DIY production provided by Nik Kozub (Frazier's former bandmate in the the Edmonton dance-punk group Shout Out Out Out Out) and additional instrumentation provided by Fucked Up's Jonah Falco, who lends the record a wall-of-sound quality that uplifts but never grates. In their capable hands, a distorted bass guitar sounds like it was discovered in the seventh circle of hell, while a menacing synth line feels as though plugged directly into the sun.Taken together, I'd venture to call this one of the most ambitious and heavy rock albums to emerge from the Canadian prairies in decades. And unlike other promising Edmonton artists who were quick to flee the city only to wallow in increasingly tedious solipsism, Home Front have discovered magic by leaning into the strength and resilience of their own community, tapping into the raw emotion of friendship and the steely determination of survival."We're born alone / We die alone," MacKinnon declares on "Light Sleeper," Watch It Die's rousing lead single. "Don't ever think you have to live alone!"
Wavelength
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