Album review: Senses Fail – Hell Is In Your Head

The world is a scary place right now. Climate change, wars, a pandemic and a mental health crisis aren’t exactly having us all feeling cheery. On Hell Is In Your Head, Senses Fail’s last-standing founding member Buddy Nielsen gets boldly honest on the challenge of raising tiny humans when the world is a pile of shit, and how he’s been pondering his own mortality more than ever in this poetically pessimistic record.

This eighth studio album is most impressive for its witty and sarcastic lyricism. Opener Burial Of The Dead sets the theme of grief from the get-go with chants of ‘I never got to say goodbye’ before swooping into End Of The World/A Game Of Chess, where it really gets ballsy: ‘My father told me that he never should have had kids, my mother is a narcissist’, whines Buddy. Its lyrics are so brutal they feel like a punch in the gut, they don’t dare to skirt around the truth and give us an entertaining reality check.

Death By Water showcases some of the more impressive offerings aside from lyrics, moody and edgy, with a satisfying breakdown featuring beastly growls and screams. The title-track continues to dive in deep on the struggles of making ends meet and being caught in the rut of a daily slog, while the album’s six-minute closer Grow Away From Me is an honest ballad on parenthood and its unexpected challenges in this difficult decade, with wavering guitar to see things out.

This album is purposefully careless, its words are the most potent part of what makes it magical, both outrageous and down to earth. It’s an honest fresh wound, like the raw skin of a grazed knee as Buddy stands to his feet, brushing it off and embracing the fall.

Verdict: 4/5

For fans of: Taking Back Sunday, The Used, The Red Jumpsuit Apparatus

Hell Is In Your Head is released on July 15 via Pure Noise Records