Senses Fail Announce New Record, 'If There Is A Light, It Will Find You'

If there is one band that I am dreading the day a break-up announcement comes, it's Senses Fail.   

One of the most solid, persistent yet sadly somewhat underrated post-hardcore bands of the 21st century is Senses Fail. Forging ever forward with a new found vigour over the past couple of years, the band have just announced their 7^th full-length album, 'If There Is A Light, It Will Find You', with this new 12-track album being released on February 16th, 2018 via Pure Noise Records/Sony Music Australia.

'If There Is A Light, It Will Find You' was produced by Beau Burchell (Saosin, Hands Like Houses) and was the first time that frontman and only remaining original member Buddy Nielsen fully wrote the entire album by his lonesome. Supposedly, Nielsen experienced a few life-altering shifts over the past two years that have contributed directly to the making and tone of this record. While never specified what exactly happened in his life - may be a good sticking point for an interview me thinks - some of the band's best records have come at crucial, pivotal times in the singer's personal life. (See: the content and theme of 2015's damned solid 'Pull The Thorns From Your Heart' and the singer publicly coming out as queer and opening up of sexual issues in his past in 2014).

Underneath all of this album’s brighter, melody-driven and aggressive exterior lurks this darker, deeper and brooding fascination with the concept of our mortality; creating the usual Senses Fail sonic juxtaposition of light and darkness. Each and every Senses Fail record is marked by some incredibly emotional and poignant tales of personal dissonance, immense stress, heartache, and past issues crawling back to the surface. On 'Still Searching' (2006) it was the three-pronged finale of destroyed mental health and one's own eventual tragic suicide on 'All Good Cowboys Have Daddy Issues', 'Negative Space' and 'The Preist & The Matador'; on 'Life Is Not A Waiting Room' (2008) it was the self-loathing lamentation of one never finding love on 'Map The Streets' and dealing with a devastating breakup in 'Blackout'; and on 'The Fire' (2010), it was a quest to move past trauma, a move for self-perservation and to find inner love on 'Landslide', 'Saint Anthony', and 'New Year's Eve'. And that's not even counting both the band's debut EP, their first album, the beautiful 'Renacer' (2013(, or their previous record either!

Casual and die-hard fans alike will notice a stronger shift back to the band’s punk rock sound; honing a sound the band first realized on records like the now lyrically problematic records like 'Let It Enfold You' and the aforementioned classic 'Still Searching'. Case in point, along with the record's announcement also comes with the release of their brand new single, 'Double Cross', an electric track featuring Buddy Nielsen soulful clean vocals and coarse screams, the band's trademark fiery guitar melodies and vocal hooks and down-to-earth passionate lyrics. 'Double Cross' is also a song that seems to be a really self-aware tale of being in a band for nearly two decades, being the only original member of said band, and of trying to find passion and inspiration in life for your music; both in that of the present and the work of the future. And I'd expect nothing less in terms of lyrical honesty from Nielsen at this point.

Check it out below!