Home Front<\/strong> are a DIY punk band formed in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, in 2020, and this is their follow-up to 2023’s debut full-length Games Of Power<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Graeme MacKinnon on vocals, guitars and bass and Clint Frazier on drums, synths, keyboards and programming play an intoxicating mix of punk, new wave, pop, indie and rock ‘n’ roll.<\/p>\n\n\n\n MacKinnon was previously in hardcore outfit No Problem and street-punk band Wednesday Night Heroes, while Frazier was in dance-punk\/electro group Shout Out Out Out Out and The Franklins.<\/p>\n\n\n\n All those influences and more are brought to bear in this splendid album. I’ve seen them likened to early ’80s British band Blitz, when their early street-punk sound took an electronic turn, and that’s a fair comparison.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There are some bleak themes here, about loss of youth, planning your own death and how the world is going to shit, but despite that it’s a surprisingly uplifting album.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Things kick off with title track Watch It Die<\/em>, and it picks up pace with the dystopian-sounding New Madness<\/em> before lead single Light Sleeper <\/em>gives us the first of several earworms. If this was Turnstile it would be all over the radio as MacKinnon sings “We’re born alone, we die alone\/Don’t ever think you have to, live alone.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n