Hail The Sun
Legendary independent New York-based rock label Equal Vision Records and Hail The Sun are excited to present “Relapse Is A Love Affair”, the latest single to be lifted from the Friday, October 24 release of "cut. turn. fade. back.", the forthcoming studio album from the acclaimed experimental California-based rock band (pre-save, pre-add, pre-order HERE). “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.”
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.”
