Graeme MacKinnon of street punk band Wednesday Night Heroes and Clint Frazier of dance punk band Shout Out Out Out Out have combined their talents to form Home Front, a band you could easily mistake for a 1980s band if you didn’t know your music history. Today, they release their second full-length album, Watch It Die, which continues to develop their mash-up of post punk, Oi!, and street punk from their previous records.
Singer Graeme MacKinnon’s vocals work for either type of song, which the band emulates immaculately. It would be easy for Home Front to be a street punk or Oi! band, but the addition of Clint Frazier’s synths and keys elevates these songs to a different place. Mashing these genres together creates an opportunity to evolve them both beyond their initial sound and, in some cases, eras.
“Watch It Die” opens with its title track. Behind its sustained synth opening is a sound clip from the film “To Sleep With Anger.” This is a fantastic opening song that not only sets the base sound for the record but also introduces the themes it will explore, with anger and disillusionment at the forefront. “Light Sleeper” questions both of these emotions, but ultimately is about carrying that torch of being good-natured when it’s so easy to just give up.
This album scratches a lot of musical and lyrical itches for me. Songs like “Between The Waves,” “Kiss the Sky,” and “Dancing with Anxiety” feel as if you put them in a mix of songs from the mid-1980s, you wouldn’t be able to tell this was released forty years later. The same could be said for songs like “For The Children (Fuck All),” and “Young Offender” that work as angsty Oi! songs.
On the surface, Home Front sounds like Blitz and New Order had a baby, but as you peel away the layers, you’ll find Easter eggs from punk and new wave’s past. Whether it’s a Cure-like guitar riff at the end of the chorus for “Between the Waves” or a buzzing Ramones rhythm guitar in “Young Offender,” Home Front’s sound is a love letter to the bands that shaped these genres.
As I get older, songs about contemplating death and mortality are much more on my mind than a love song. “Eulogy” is a great addition to of songs to add to that list. Lyrics like, “I’m not afraid to die, it’s the living part that’s hard,” aren’t foreign concepts. Songwriters of the New Wave and Punk Era in the 1980s pretty much nailed that feeling of being a kid well. This album hits on what it’s like to have these lingering feelings as an adult who has been through the wringer.
I think nostalgia is an issue when there’s an over-saturation of repetition of what’s being remembered. Home Front could be written off as playing relics of the past dripping with nostalgia if it didn’t move the genres forward. That being said, one thing is for damn sure: there’s a ton of heart behind these songs. Watch It Die leans way more into the dancey side of things in comparison to their previous album, Games of Power, and that’s okay. It helps make the album’s reflective, but ready-to-fight tone even more accessible. Watch It Die is a solid album from a band I hope to see much more from in the future.