New Jersey post-hardcore unit Senses Fail have announced their eighth studio album Hell Is In Your Head, as well as dropping its first single “I’m Sorry I’m Leaving”. This is the band’s first studio album since 2018’s If There Is Light, It Will Find You. To view the music video, click here or through the player below.
I’m Sorry I’m Leaving sees vocalist Buddy Nielsen confronting his anxieties around being a career musician and the constant struggle to create a good work/life balance and being a father. Speaking on the single, he comments “I wrote this song about the constant struggling with making music and art as a living. I am constantly waiting for it to all fail and disappear even 20 years into a career. At no point do I ever feel safe. After having a child, the relationship with this lifestyle became more strained. Having to leave home and lose time with your child while also hoping that what you do continues to support your family and remains fulfilling is complicated. Continuing to improve and remove my own trauma in order to be a better father is the bases and goal of the song.”
Hell Is In Your Head takes the listener through the same foreboding mortality and impending doom Nielsen felt ever since his wife’s pregnancy. It explores questions Nielsen poses and attempts to answer in its 11 dark, brooding songs.
“My wife had a pretty serious childbirth,” he says. “I don’t want to say she almost died but it was pretty scary for a minute. And the relationship you have to have with your child is just a constant letting go of yourself in ways that you didn’t necessarily perceive you needed to. I’ve had to start to come to terms with my own death because my daughter, who’s now four, keeps asking about it. So this felt like an opportunity to maybe address grief and how we process being – how do you have a kid, how do you be alive, how do you continue to live a meaningful life while also knowing that you’re going to die?”
Separating the album into two thematically different halves, it covers a lot of ground, and does so equally as emotionally as it does cerebrally. Sections are also split musically, with portions of the album being in minor key and the rest being major. The result is a musical journey that embraces the darkness of its subject matter, but then learns to let go. That indulges in plenty of existential self-reflection, but which also zooms out to paint a more widescreen picture.
Hell Is In Your Head is set to release July 15th, 2022 via Pure Noise Records. For more information on the album, pre-saving, or limited edition merch, click here. Album tracklist and art work can be viewed below. For all things Senses Fail and post-hardcore, keep it locked to Boolin Tunes!
- Burial of the Dead
- End of The World / A Game of Chess (feat. Connie Sgarbossa)
- The Fire Sermon
- I Am Error
- Death by Water (feat. Spencer Charnas)
- What the Thunder Said
- Miles to Go
- Lush Rimbaugh
- Hell is in Your Head
- I’m Sorry I’m Leaving
- Grow Away from Me