Home Front hit the road next month in support of their timeless new album which cemented them as one of punk and hardcore’s most revered current bands. Watch It Die was released via La Vida Es Un Mus to high acclaim from the likes of NPR, The Needle Drop, Stereogum, Bandcamp, Paste, Alternative Press, See-Saw, New Noise Magazine, just to name a few. In addition to their select dates with Angel Du$t and Beton Arme next month, today Home Front announce a headlining run across East Coast, Midwest and more with support from Bootlicker.
Touring members Brandi Strauss (bass), Ian Rowley (guitar), and Warren Oostlander (drums) join Home Front founding members / songwriters Graeme MacKinnon (vocals) and Clint Frazier (keys) to bring Watch It Die to life. Their all inclusive, genre-defying gigs are easily rock’s most talked about, must-see shows since the band got their start just a few years back.
Tickets go on sale tomorrow at 12PM ET Local Here.
Home Front’s Graeme MacKinnon and Clint Frazier have embedded themselves in grass roots music making, community building, and the overpowering ebbs and flows of diy punk. Formed in 2020, they’ve given their lifetime of experience a chance to distill and then power into this musically omnipotent project which equally conjures textured Tangerine Dream sounds in a film montage, or the pummelling soundtrack to the first steps taken towards winning the fight of your life.
Home Front holds on to a particular kind of passion. The sort of thing that guides you – like a climbing vine steadily blanketing your bests and worsts, cutting through changes and impasses; victory and loss. MacKinnon and Frazier’s nod to influences and the themes of their lyrics are direct and detailed while maintaining enough creative distance to feel universal and unique. The production has again been bolstered by a team of long time confidants making a huge and unique record under the humble and hard working circumstances of remote pre-production and choosing to do their recording in home studios in their home town in Edmonton, Alberta.
The architecture of Watch It Die is simple – 12 songs of danceable, hummable, rousing and honest music that only Home Front could make. The emotion of this LP is what solidifies these musical notions into meaningful art. “For us, ultimately, this is music that comes out of loss and heartbreak and failure, but I hope people have a good time listening to us. You can get rowdy, you can get emotional, you can do whatever you want, but maybe with all of that freedom, we all take a second to reflect on all our fallen brothers and sisters and friends who may have slipped away.”
On previous revered recordings Games of Power (2023) and Think of the Lie (2021), Frazier and MacKinnon gave us a snapshot of a cynical and alienating world. A place where hope was tempered by insignificance, exhaustion takes us, and where 2,000,000 voices screaming in unison can still go unheard. Watch It Die instead of asking us why and how we got here, struggling to cope with the sadness of a desperate world, brings us their “step forward” moment. A dose of optimism and ownership in the bleakest of times in which maybe it doesn’t have to feel so bad to be alone or desperate. Where the passage of time is not coloured by the nostalgia of a lost youth but more toward the celebration of wisdom earned. Watch it Die owns the ills it describes and catapults us alongside its creators who have the confidence and presence of mind to live beyond their limitations.
Watch It Die is a road map of hope. MacKinnon and Frazier state: “For all of us in Home Front, ‘Watch It Die’ comes at a very transformative time. Geopolitically, musically and in our personal lives. With friends and close family members dying, to massive uncertainty around the world, this album encapsulates what it’s like for us to step into a ‘new world’ where all the old adages of ‘everything is gonna work out fine’ feel like a joke. We watch rich people get richer while the rest of us struggle just to get by. We watch colonizers kill without consequence and in an age of information at our finger tips we watch people choosing to be ignorant to what’s going on around them. ‘Watch It Die’ speaks about our own humanity, a rebirth into a new world and how we can never go back to the way things were. We suffer for their dreams, but in saying that we must recognize the importance of our own community and look to energize them to build a better way of life. We have always been an anti-war, anti-genocide, pro-peace band. We are against crimes to human rights and all of those struggling through the horrors of imperialism. We stand with the people of Palestine and we stand with the Canadian Indigenous communities who struggle to uphold treaty rights as well as basic human rights like clean drinking water and generational trauma. One takeaway from our music is to make a safe space where our community can come together to air out grievances and find a better way to a new future.”
Home Front Live Dates:
Mar 24: Portland, OR – High Limit Room !
Mar 25: Seattle, WA – Washington Hall !
Mar 26: Boise, ID – Treefort Music Festival !
Mar 27: Salt Lake City, UT – Fellowship Hall !
Mar 29: Denver, CO – Marquis Theater !
May 06: Boston, MA – Sonia ~
May 07: New York, NY – Rocks Off Boat Cruise ~
May 08: Philadelphia, PA – Upper Darby VFW ~
May 09: Baltimore, MD – Ottobar ~
May 10: Richmond, VA – Cobra Cabana ~
May 12: Pittsburgh, PA – Preserving Underground ~
May 13: Cleveland, OH – Happy Dog ~
May 14: Chicago, IL – Cobra Lounge ~
May 15: Detroit, MI – The Sanctuary ~
May 16: Toronto, ON – East End United Church ~
May 17: Montreal, QB – Pouzza Fest ~
Jun 12: Torgau, Germany – Ain’t Like You Festival
Jun 13: Berlin, Germany – Berlin Breakout
! w/ Angel Du$t, Beton Arme and Odd Man Out
~ w/ Bootlicker
