How to follow up a debut album that was received as a perfectly constructed masterpiece? On Boys Cry Too, The Haunted Youth trade the dreamy fragility of 2022’s Dawn Of The Freak for something heavier, louder, and more emotionally unfiltered. Across eleven tracks, Joachim Liebens pushes his shoegaze-meets-indie formula into darker territory, where grunge riffs, towering walls of reverb, and whispered confessions collide with outright screams. Once again the knack for a hypnotic melody is omnipresent, but captured in a bigger sound, more mature and confident. In that regard, the eight-minute opener In My Head alone feels like a statement of intent, as cinematic, suffocating, and eventually explosive as it is.

What makes this record hit so hard, is its refusal to hide behind cool detachment. The Flemish genius writes openly about loneliness, self-destruction, addiction, and the chaos inside his own head—to be honest, the lyrics on “all the mistakes a boy makes when his heart breaks” are quite upsetting. Tellingly titled tracks like Deathwish and Murder Me inject flashes of emo-punk and 90s alt-rock into the band’s hazy atmospherics, while the instrumental Falling To Pieces stretches grief into something almost transcendent. All in all, we can only experience this 53-minute trip as a massive, bruised, and immersive performance that proves The Haunted Youth are truly unique.

Boys Cry Too is out digitally, on CD and vinyl LP, through Play It Again Sam.

Add to wantlist: Bandcamp || Discogs || The Haunted Youth || PIAS