Photo credit: Alex Bemis
California-based experimental rock band, Hail The Sun, have just unleashed their latest single, “Relapse Is A Love Affair,” and its official video. This is the most recent track to be lifted from their forthcoming studio album, cut. turn. fade. back., due for release on October 24, via Equal Vision Records. Watch it in the article below.
Stream “Relapse Is A Love Affair” here: https://hts.lnk.to/relapse
Pre-save/pre-add/pre-order cut. turn. fade. back. here: https://hts.lnk.to/cutturnfadeback
“After almost 14 years clean, I relapsed in 2023,” Hail The Sun frontman Donovan Melero recalls. “I spiraled quickly. I likened the feeling of slipping to succumbing to a love affair. To caving to that urge. It’s always there, ready to catch you off guard. Luckily, with the help of my family and friends, I got clean again and got back on my course.”
cut. turn. fade. back. track listing:
01 The Drooling Class
02 There’s No Place In Heaven For Fakes
03 Live Forever
04 Insensitive Tempo
05 Blight
06 Consumed With You
07 I Can Tell By The Scars
08 Building Code
09 Relapse Is A Love Affair
10 Rightless Destiny
11 War Crimes
Produced & engineered by Pete Adams and GRAMMY® Award Winner Johnny Kosich of Beach Noise (Kendrick Lamar), and mixed & mastered by Zakk Cervini (Blink-182, Bring Me The Horizon, Coheed and Cambria), cut. turn. fade. back. truly finds Hail The Sun going the distance, encompassing the complete cycle of life with its four monosyllabic words. An album touching on topics such as military atrocities, humanitarian crises, addiction, lost love and death, the 11 songs presented here capture the cyclical nature of all those things, as well as life itself in general.
Anybody familiar with Hail The Sun will know there’s always a great deal of meaning beneath the surface. Theirs are songs that probe the very nature of existence, that strive to find the answers to the fundamental questions that being human raises, and that don’t flinch away from any form of self-reflection whatsoever. That’s been the case since the band—lead vocalist Donovan Melero, guitarists Shane Gann and Aric Garcia, bassist John Stirrat and drummer Allen Casillas—formed in Chico, CA in 2009, but which is especially the case on cut. turn. fade. back., their seventh full-length.
For the first time in their career, Hail The Sun worked with the production outfit Beach Noise, whose experience is much more steeped in the hip-hop world—most notably, they worked on a good chunk of Kendrick Lamar’s acclaimed 2022 album, Mr. Morale & the Big Steppers. On paper, it seems like a drastic shift, but the reality is less dramatic—the band actually went to college with a member of Beach Noise, so they’ve been in each other’s orbits for a while now.
Yet at the same time, Hail The Sun wanted to return to their roots of being a band in a room and jamming live. In order to do so, they went to Pus Cavern recording studios in Sacramento with Beach Noise in tow to craft the songs that had mostly been written already. So while cut. turn. fade. back. doesn’t see the band flip genres or anything, the production team definitely had an active role in the creation of these songs, as well as their final product.
From the moment the post-hardcore lilt of “The Drooling Class” kicks this record off until the passionate intensity of “War Crimes” brings it to an end in a cacophony that emulates the violent conflicts that inspired it, cut. turn. fade. back. becomes part of the band’s own cycle—re-establishing who they are while simultaneously (but subtly) reshaping their identity. Just listen to the spiteful, coruscating energy of “There’s No Place In Heaven For Fakes”, the shapeshifting, surround-sound production of “Insensitive Tempo” and “Blight”, and the almost constant crescendo of “I Can Tell By The Scars” and it’s clear that Hail The Sun are as intentional and fervent about their art as they ever have been.
“It doesn’t matter if people take away the intended message from these songs,” says Melero, “and I’m certainly not going to police it, but we do, as always, want to encourage critical thinking. Fifteen years in, I love that we’ve been allowed to have this growing fan base to speak to. I feel very grateful and fortunate, and I hope that it keeps carrying us forward and continues to be the thing that we can sustain life from.”
Hail The Sun are also currently touring North America on its co-headline run with Between The Buried and Me. Having recently headlined its own Kill Iconic Fest in San Antonio, TX this past Sunday, October 5 — an event that also featured performances by Head Automatica, Between The Buried and Me, Makari, Omerta, Murals, Resilia and more — the current tour will culminate in an appearance at The Fillmore in Charlotte, NC on Thursday, October 30.
October
09 — Las Vegas, NV — 24 Oxford
10 — San Francisco, CA — August Hall *
12 — Portland, OR — Revolution Hall *
13 — Seattle, WA — The Crocodile *
14 — Vancouver, BC — The Pearl *
16 — Edmonton, AB — Union Hall *
17 — Calgary, AB — Macewan Hall *
19 — Spokane, WA — Knitting Factory *
20 — Boise, ID — Knitting Factory *
21 — Bozeman, MT — The Elm *
22 — Missoula, MT — The Wilma *
24 — Denver, CO — Summit Music Hall *
25 — Wichita, KS — TempleLive *
26 — Des Moines, IA — Wooly’s *
27 — Chicago, IL — Vic Theatre *
28 — Columbus, OH — Newport Music Hall *
29 — Nashville, TN — Brooklyn Bowl *
30 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore *
* — co-headline with Between The Buried and Me
Follow Hail The Sun:
https://www.facebook.com/share/16VGR8RAGB/
https://www.instagram.com/hailthesun/
https://open.spotify.com/artist/0XblvrTo6mnHOxWIP1t5T6
https://music.apple.com/us/artist/hail-the-sun/382677770