Home Front: Watch It Die
In their new album, Home Front, originally consisting of the duo Graeme MacKinnon (vocals, bass, guitar) and Clint Frazier (synths, drum computer), steps out of the shadows of their early material and into a stadium of their own making. The synth-punk blueprint persists: punk guitars, drum machines, and new-wave synths. But ‘Watch It Die’ feels looser than earlier work, charged by the sweaty push-and-pull of live-touring with a full band.
The record feels like a chain reaction: anxiety sparking euphoria, bleakness dissolving into solidarity, both integrating and alternating between shout-along street punk and melancholic, goth-like new wave. This makes ‘Watch It Die’ the perfect synth-powered boot-stomp you did not know you needed.
The most iconic songs on the album are those that channel millennial angst into synth fueled hardcore anthems - like the title track, ‘Eulogy’, and ‘For the Children’. Although some songs do not hit as hard - like ‘new madness’, ‘between the waves’, ‘the vanishing’ — these do have a role in connecting the harder songs of the album, while sometimes also offering some critical political messages.
The title track opens the record as MacKinnon demands to know how beauty survives in a collapsing world. ‘Light Sleeper’ answers with a grim mantra—“We’re born alone, we die alone” — but with the message of solidarity "don't ever think you have to live alone", lifted by surging synths that will raise fists.
In the core of the album you hear Home Front's ability to write perfect anthems. First, ‘Eulogy’ is a bittersweet song about the inevitability of death, fueled by Cure-like melancholy and sharpened by MacKinnon’s perfect delivery. Just two songs later ‘For The Children’ has all the ingredients to become a hardcore anthem, and has a similar feel as ‘Nation’.
‘Kiss the Sky’ and ‘Always This Way’ even add some sleazy rock-n-roll vibes, while ‘Young Offender’ pairs some of the album’s heaviest vocals with the eerie screeching synths.
What defines ‘Watch It Die’ is not just the genre-splicing, but the connections they make along the way. Beneath all the noise lies a record obsessed with both death and survival, while keeping each other afloat while the world crumbles around the edges. Home Front turns collapse into community, urging you to endure together.