‘They say the sky is the limit, Take a running start before you leap, It’s their world, we live in it, Spread your wings with chains clamped to your feet, It’s the way it is, until the day you die’ (Kiss The Sky)

As you survey the rather bleak state of the world, hope can seem like a luxury that we can ill-afford.  Yet, it is essential to ensuring that our values are not subsumed amid the waves of socio-economic atomisation and the self-serving antics of political grifters.  Hope is the spark that ensures that resistance can ignite.

And the importance of recognising this dynamic is at the very heart of Home Front’s third album, and follow-up to 2021’s Think Of The Lie and 2023’s Games Of Power. The Edmonton band have always been musical magpies of rare invention.  The duo, who expand to an uproarious full band in the live setting, continue to meld the combative energy of the hardcore with the dark melodicism of post-punk and the sheer danceability of synth-pop with an uplifting abandon.

Amid the warmly pulsing synths, glistening shards of guitar, crisp percussion, and even rollicking piano, flares of Echo And The Bunnymen and The Eurythmics via New Order are imbued with a forceful punk velocity.  And Watch It Die finds Home Front in their most assured form yet, marshalling these influences with an ever more deftly organic touch.  They sweep from the anthemic drama of the title track to the raucous Oi!-fuelled For The Children (Fuck All), and then from the insidiously catchy Kiss The Sky to the bristling dark wave of Young Offender, with an exuberant yet seamless relish.

The theme of hope that permeates the album though should not be misconstrued for blind optimism.  Home Front are very clear eyed about the world that confronts us, one rooted in military violence, the myth of meritocracy, and the criminalisation of poverty.  But, it does recognise that the antidote can only be found in ourselves through the bonds of collective action, community, and friendship: ‘Never think that you need to be alone’ (Light Sleeper).  The glimmering shoegaze of closer Empire leaves us with the thought that even the most entrenched system ultimately devours itself, but someone does need to be around to deliver the toppling touch.