Home Front - Watch It Die
La Vida Es Un Mus Discos
Released on November 14th, 2025
As hard as it is to believe, we’re already more than a month into 2026 - time flies, whether you’re having fun or not, I guess. While there’s lots of great music already being released and some great stuff on the horizon for this year, Cups N Cakes has some unfinished business to take care of from 2025. Namely, it would be completely unacceptable to fully close the chapter on last year without a proper review of Watch It Die, the “new” release from Edmonton’s Home Front.
Don’t let the fact that we’re a little truant in getting around to this review speak to the quality of the record. Released in November 2025, Watch It Die landed a spot in my personal top five albums of the year, and is another gleaming demonstration of why Home Front continues to expand their status as one of Canada’s most important bands.
One of the things I love about Home Front is their solid sense of identity. From their squared-corner iconography to Graeme MacKinnon’s distinctive throaty vocals, to their defiant consciousness, to the lush 80’s synths, this is a band that knows exactly who they are, even as they oscillate between themes and sounds. They claim their distinctive voice and share their message brazenly with equal parts snarl and grace, a raised fist and an open hand.
Similar to 2023’s Games Of Power, there is sort of a dual identity on display throughout Watch It Die. The Overton Window may have shifted a little further towards softer edges than discordant abrasion on this offering, but there is still a back and forth interplay throughout the record, an alternating dance between contrasts. Gutter grittiness balanced with soaring anthemics; angular guitars offset by shimmering synths. Home Front is still at the core a punk band, with all legitimacy and cred due to the scene veterans that make up the band. But they also appear to realize that punk cred has more to do with defiant creative risk-taking and community-building than the speed of snare cracks or the number of studs in your belt. So while still a punk album at heart, Watch It Die is also very much unapologetically glittering - steeped in all varieties of -wave (new, synth, dark, whathaveyou), along with post-punk, synthpop, emo, and post-hardcore, and other subgenres.
As the pendulum swings sonically, so too does Watch It Die move back and forth thematically. The record is both micro and macro focused, with political protest pieces (ala “New Madness”) juxtaposed against wistful introspection (as on “Dancing With Anxiety”). As might be inferred from the title, loss, death, and violence play a central role in the emotive core of the album. But here again there is an element of duality, perhaps best demonstrated by album highlight “Light Sleeper” - existential dread, sure, but mixed with something akin to hope: “We’re born alone / We die alone / Don’t ever think you have to live alone.”
The beauty of the record is the sense of catharsis and community Home Front creates. We’re all suffering, and there are injustices everywhere. There’s a lot to grieve, and a lot to be angry about. But by embracing the anger and the loss, and treating it with equal parts tenderness and frustration, Home Front offers maybe a place to belong and create something beautiful in the cracks of all that’s crumbling.
