Home Front’s third album lands with the uneasy thud of a watered-down Protomartyr filtered through the pop-punk polish of Green Day and the more saccharine edge of Turnstile. The vocals, presumably meant to come off as rousing or anthemic, tilt almost instantly into cringe, a strained uplift that might read as “big” but feels gratingly hollow to anyone actually listening.
Some melodies gesture, faintly, toward a Replacements-esque sensibility, but the comparison falls apart as soon as you register how little this material risks. The record feels locked in a dated palette, an awkward collage of monochrome hardcore tropes and digital gloss. Rather than revitalising those influences, the attempt to splice them together produces something oddly tacky – derivative without charm and nostalgic without memory.
The album pulls between two poles: guitar-led rock with synth accents versus synth-driven tracks where guitars barely register. They’re unquestionably stronger in the latter mode: ‘Light Sleeper’, ‘Between the Waves’, and ‘The Vanishing’ all pulse with 80s synth melodrama, urgent and windswept. Elsewhere, the reach for arena-scaled rock collapses: the fleeting Springsteen nod at the start of ‘Always This Way’ hints at nocturnal grandeur but resolves into post-pop-punk cosplay.
The accompanying political statement says all the right things, but on the record, it becomes progressive slogans strapped to overclocked posturing. “Maybe it doesn’t have to feel so bad to be alone or desperate” is pleasant enough, but weightless, which is the underlying issue. In 2025, when the most genuinely oppositional music is coming from artists without access to polished PR, it’s fair to question whether this strain of music still qualifies as countercultural at all. Not everything needs to reinvent the wheel, but if you’re retracing familiar ground, it has to be good enough to matter.
Still, there’s value in what Home Front offer: sincerity in a scene that often rewards irony and community-building in isolating times. Watch It Die will likely comfort those already on side, but it leaves you wondering whether well-intentioned decency is enough when the world they’re responding to demands more than sanitised anger and familiar sounds.
