After teaming up with Pop Punk Wolf Records, Hawtorne’s Far Below Perfect is set to unveil his LP, I’ve Been to Hell Before…, which is cataclysmic enough in its cultivation of pop-punk evolution that the genre may never be the same again.
Starting with a glimpse into the Far Below Perfect live experience, the LP shifts into the hit, Isn’t Life Grand?, which echoes the influence of Blink-182 and Bowling for Soup, while the pop-punk agent provocateur blasts through their frenetically fierce progressions at a dizzyingly fast tempo, which only slows to inject some existential humour.
In Where’s Your Hero Now? Far Below Perfect continues to give the thrash pioneers a run for their frantic energy while working in elements which hark back to the legacy of the Beastie Boys. In the following track, Far Below Perfect finds their groove in groove metal while never loosening their grip on iconic emo aesthetics until the track culminates in a rallying cry for anyone who would rather die than surrender.
If anything comes close to a ballad, it is track five, April’s Fool, which injects melodic hooks around the agonised with ennui vocal lines before the following single, Headaches, exhibits the artist’s ability to weave progressive ingenuity into their hits. To conclude the LP, Far Below Perfect channels the bite of punk into the infectious volition of future-forward pop-punk in Be Fri Or St End, and ends the LP on an augmented high with On My Own, which proves that loneliness might be a curse, but people with enough resilience to endure isolation can’t be reckoned with. It’s quite the statement for a one-man pop-punk powerhouse to make.
The I’ve Been to Hell Before… LP will hit the airwaves on April 26th; stream it on SoundCloud.
Review by Amelia Vandergast